The Seventh Parallel
by Socks-With-Stripes
Summary: Post House Of Hades. Annabeth and Percy have escaped Tartarus, bringing Luke along with them. There's no time for celebration though, as Jason quickly falls fatally ill, relationships begin to deteriorate in the new stress, and Nico is reluctant to tell what he knows. As Annabeth tries to work things out with Luke and Percy, she too struggles to understand what is really going on.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Note: Remember that time when I said this account was only for Avoiding Clichés Like the Plague? Hahahahahahaha I failed miserably at that. It's been more than a year since I've posted, and I seem to have spent a good deal of that time writing fanfiction. After creating a trillion short stories, I wrote this 43 000 epic, twisted, why-would-you-make-this piece of crap. I warned you that my stories are weird, and I think this is one of the odder ideas I've come up with._

_Also, before anyone gets out their Nancy Drew brains, I'd like to say that this isn't really a whodunit mystery so much as a what-the-hell-is-going-on mystery._

_ In a couple of weeks the summer starts, and I'm going to be away for two months. I'll only have access to a computer every couple of weeks. But this whole story is already written and I'm not wasting it, so I promise it will all be up before House of Hades comes out._

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Chapter 1

The two massive sheets of rock that made up the Doors of Death were making an awful grinding noise that hurt Annabeth's ears. She could see the gap between them getting smaller, and on the other side of them, maybe three hundred feet away, she could make out the silhouettes of several people. If they were going to leave, it would have to be now. Annabeth looked back at the raging fight. Didn't these demons realize there were only three opponents, and one of them was standing off to the side? The beasts were mainly fighting each other. Percy (one arm gripping his bandaged chest) and Luke were, of course, right in the middle of the fight, destroying everything they could, not that it made a difference down here.

Luke.

He had found them after the fall, carrying Annabeth's backpack, laptop, and knife. He'd always been useful like that. Since they'd needed a guide to the Underworld anyway, Luke had gone along with them. Annabeth had a tiny bit of hope that the two boys would have gotten along a bit better than before, but predictably, they didn't. First, Luke had to do his older-brother-assess-new-boyfriend thing, which Percy didn't appreciate. He probably would have let it go, but Luke was just openly unfriendly to Percy. Annabeth knew why, of course, although she'd hoped Luke would have gotten over it. Percy, on the other hand, still couldn't figure out where all the bitterness had come from. Annabeth figured he was only putting up with Luke for her sake. She had still made Luke promise to come with them out of the Underworld.

Annabeth called to them over the snarls of the beasts, and immediately regretted it. Percy noticed her frantic waving and the doors closing, and elbowed Luke to let him know. This caused both of them to lose concentration and get buried under the howling creatures. The beasts now turned their attention to Annabeth. She threw her arm out and slashed at as many as she could with her knife, but she was backed up against the wall of stone and had no escape. Their claws snatched at her hair and raked at her clothes, scratching her face. She held her arms up to protect her head, and felt their teeth and claw dig into her forearms.

Something grabbed her arm, and this time it was a human hand. Percy pulled her off the wall, and together they set off running through the ever-narrowing doorway. Annabeth turned back and saw Luke standing among the demons, sword lowered. They weren't attacking him. Of course. He belonged with them now. He was dead. Luke waved at her and she stopped running.

"What are you doing?" Percy shouted over the noise of the shuddering rocks, but Annabeth ignored him. Luke had never planned to return with them. He'd just told her that so that she would leave. Another broken promise. Yeah, right, not if she could help it. She'd already lost him once, and it was not going to happen again.

Annabeth turned away from the light and started running back into Tartarus. She grabbed Luke's wrist and tried to drag him into the doors. He pulled back, but she didn't let go.

"Come on!" she screamed, "I'm not leaving you down here." Luke shook his head.

"No, I'm not coming. I should stay here," he said. Not the answer Annabeth had been looking for. She continued to pull on his arm, despite his resistance.

"I'm not leaving without you," she yelled. Luke looked at her. Then he looked at Percy, the doors, the creatures around him, then back to her. It was obvious that she was being serious.

"Fine, but we have to go _now_," he said. Annabeth didn't wait a second for him to change his mind. She started running back through the doors, this time holding onto Luke's arm. Percy ran ahead of her, looking back every now and then to make sure she was okay. Luke was running behind her, but she didn't think she'd ever seen such a reluctant expression. Was he going to dissolve into dust like a monster when they reached the outside world? No, others had made it out this way, and they had been in one piece.

The walls were much closer together now. Annabeth had to turned her shoulders sideways so that they wouldn't scrape the walls. Less than a hundred feet now. Annabeth could feel the warmth of the sunlight on her face already, and for a moment she wondered _where_ exactly the Doors of Death were in the mortal world. As she glanced backwards, Annabeth realized that they had just run out of a huge, majestic marble and limestone temple. The walls of rocks seemed to be bending around it. They didn't bend around Annabeth, though, and the cavern they were now in was still getting narrower.

The hopelessness of the Underworld seemed to seep out of her as Annabeth charged out of the doors, and a joy filled her that she had not felt in what seemed like years. As she collapsed on the sandy ground in the sun, she had never felt more alive. Percy was okay, Luke was back, they had made it out of the Underworld –

Her happiness was cut short when she heard Luke shout. She sat up and looked around wildly. They were on a beach with the blue ocean behind her and white cliffs all around. It was beautiful, despite the piles of monster dust that littered the ground. Beside the crack that ran all the way up the enormous bleached cliff, a small clump of people were standing in a circle, facing inwards, weapons drawn. Leo, Piper, Hazel, Frank, Jason, and Nico. Annabeth had only once before seen such a look of loathing on Nico's face, and it was when his sister had died. At the time it had been towards Percy. Now the glare was directed towards Luke, who sat on the ground, looking dazed but worried, surrounded by weapon points. He held his hands up as if surrendering.

Annabeth scrambled to her feet and ran over. Percy was sitting in the water already, completely submerged, healing his chest wound, and oblivious to what was going on.

"He followed you out, Annabeth," Hazel said, not taking her eyes off Luke. Annabeth shook her head.

"I know. This is Luke, he's a friend of mine who we met up with down there," she explained. Nico snorted when she said the word _friend_.

"Yeah. Right. _Friend,_" he said. Leo was also looking a little nervous.

"But wasn't the guy who started the second Titan war called Luke?" he asked, "And didn't he die? And didn't he have a scar like that? And didn't he have blond hair? And wasn't he your friend?" Annabeth really needed to talk to everyone at camp again about explaining the war to the new campers.

"I can't believe I'm going to have to explain this again: Luke's not the bad guy," she said.

"No, of course not. he just reduced half of Olympus to rubble," Nico added. Annabeth threw her hands up in exasperation.

"Just give him a chance, okay?" Luke raised one of his hands above his head as Annabeth spoke.

"Anyone want to hear my side of the story?" he said.

"Not really. Nobody's supposed to get out of the Underworld." Piper had her horn of plenty pointing at him. It didn't exactly seem menacing. Luke noticed this and turned towards her, as she was the only one who wasn't pointing something sharp at him. She brandished the horn at him, but all she got in return was a very confused look.

"Look," Piper said, "he tried to bring back the Titans and destroy Olympus! Isn't that enough of a reason that we shouldn't trust him?"

"But-" Jason was interrupted by Leo.

"Dude, he tried to _kill your sister. _You know, the one who just saved your butt in the battle," he said. Luke made another attempt to defend himself. He started to protest.

"I wasn't going to kill-" Annabeth cut him off.

"Wait, the hunters are here?" she asked. Frank nodded. He had been silent the whole time, probably sizing up Luke and how much of a threat he was.

"They arrived halfway through the fight," he said. "Said Artemis had sent them."

Annabeth frowned.

"But the gods aren't talking to anyone right now."

"Apparently Artemis doesn't play by Zeus's rules," Jason said.

"Fair enough. Are you guys going to let him go now?"

None of them moved. Nico gave her a look of disbelief.

"Annabeth," he said slowly, "let me say this very clearly: _He. Tried. To. Kill. You_. And you're okay with that?" Luke looked down at the ground, ashamed, and Annabeth shifted her weight uncomfortably from foot to foot.

"I didn't want to," Luke mumbled. The others looked at him suspiciously. Jason seemed to be concentrating very hard.

"My sister had pictures of you," Jason said.

"I take it you're Jason then," Luke said, looking up at him. Jason nodded. "Yeah, Annabeth told me about you."

"I… I guess if Thalia trusted him that much… I mean, she doesn't trust a lot of people," Jason said slowly.

"Everyone trusted him," Nico pointed out. He was really not making this easy.

"Thalia's – was my best friend. You really think –"

"Who you tried to kill."  
"I wasn't going to kill her!"

By this time Percy had noticed the commotion and come over to join the party.

"What's going on?" he asked, his eyebrows knitting together in confusion.

"Okay, convince everyone that they can trust Luke," Annabeth said as she gestured to the young man sitting in the sand. Luke gave a half-hearted thumbs up. Percy looked at him for a long time, his face twisted up, seemingly in a moral dispute. Annabeth held her breath. Finally Percy took a deep breath and looked around the circle.

"Well… I guess he was pretty good when we were in the Underworld. Like, he didn't try to kill us or anything," he said slowly.

"So basically you can stop pointing your weapons at him now," Annabeth said. Apparently the confirmation from both Annabeth and Percy, and Jason's opinion were enough to convince them. They still looked uneasy about the whole thing, and Nico looked downright angry, lowering his sword only reluctantly.

"But he tried to destroy camp, and the whole Western Civilization," Leo said. He'd clearly been reading up on his Camp Half-Blood history, not that it was particularly hard to find out about the war. Anyone who'd fought there – Drew, Travis, Connor, Katie, Clarisse, Jake, Will – they all loved to tell their stories of battle and scare the new campers. Annabeth was about to come to Luke's defense again, but Jason got there first.

"Look, how about we trust him for now, but we keep an eye on him," Jason suggested, "And if he tries to do anything, we kick him out." The others nodded and muttered some form of an agreement, but Nico still didn't look happy. He probably partly blamed Luke for Bianca's death.

"Okay, now that's settled, where are the hunters?" Annabeth asked. Luke nodded.

"Yeah, I need to see Thalia and apologize for… well, a lot, I guess."

"Around that cliff." Jason pointed to his right, where the cliffs curved around a corner and out of sight. Voices echoed off the stone. It certainly sounded like people were there.

"Right. Let's go, then," Annabeth said. She sounded much more confidant than she felt. As the group (which had grown to nine now) set off for the hunters' camp, Annabeth glanced wearily back at the cliffs that held the Doors of Death. Did they really loom over her so threateningly, or was it just her imagination? Were those cracks half way up really arranged in the shape of a face, or were they innocent fractures? And those ledges that jutted out near the top? Those certainly held skeletons.

Annabeth noticed that she wasn't the only one who was still nervous about the cliffs. Percy and Luke kept looking back, too, and neither had put their weapons away yet. Percy gripped Riptide so tightly she could see the veins in his arms. It occurred to her that perhaps walking into the hunters' camp with two boys holding weapons and looking extremely tense might not have been the best approach, but she brushed away her concern. The hunters didn't mind Percy all that much and Luke… well, Luke was going to get punched whether he was holding a sword or not. Thalia would see to that.

As they arrived at the hunters' camp, the girls didn't too happy to see them, despite the fact that they'd all just fought in a battle together. Then again, the hunters never looked too happy to see anyone. Especially not boys who they'd fought against the previous summer.


	2. Chapter 2

And here we have chapter two_. _Thanks to the people who read and reviewed. Next chapter comes up next Friday, assuming my exams don't kill me before then. Oh, and in case anyone was wondering what it's rated T for: mostly language, and dark themes that I wouldn't read to a small child.

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Chapter 2

The hunters all looked like they were ready to fight. Even those who had been lying down, bandages wrapped around their injuries, were up and ready to kick some demigod butt.

"Uh, we come in peace?" Leo said it like he was asking permission to stay alive.

"Look," said a blonde hunter. She seemed to be about thirteen, but you never could tell with the hunters. "Just because we fought with you there, doesn't mean we're on your side. The battle's over, and we're going home. Unless…" The girl raised her eyebrows and looked at Hazel, who shifted uncomfortably and shook her head. Nico glared at the blonde girl.

"Yeah, we get that. But I wanted to talk to Thalia. You know, she's_ kind of_ our friend, and we _kind of_ just got out of the Underworld," Annabeth said. The blonde girl sized Annabeth up. Annabeth was suddenly sure she knew how Luke and Thalia had always felt when she had given them patronizing looks as a seven-year-old. It was strange to see someone so obviously younger than you seem so old.

"Fine. Hey! Thalia!" she called over her shoulder. Her voice was so loud Annabeth was surprised part of the cliff didn't collapse.

Thalia came out of one of the tents near the edge of the camp. She had a cut on her left cheek, but it didn't look bad. The emotions on her face varied from excitement as she saw Annabeth and Percy, to indifference at Frank, happiness as she reached Jason, Hazel, and Piper, and a very plain I-will-destroy-you look at Leo, who was alternating between nervous looks at Thalia and glances of longing at the blonde hunter. Typical. Then she reached Luke, and her eyes narrowed. There were a few seconds of very tense silence. A few of the hunters still hadn't put away their weapons. Annabeth figured these were the ones who had been at the battle of Manhattan.

"Luke?" Thalia said uncertainly. Luke made a valiant attempt at smiling, but he looked too scared to pull it of. That was logical. Annabeth would have been scared, too, if Thalia had been this mad at her.

"Yeah. I, uh, I guess I'm sorry about…" he swallowed and looked at the ground for a second before continuing. "the whole war and – and stuff."

Thalia looked mildly surprised. She slowly walked towards him, then looked up at his face. The top of her head barely rose above his shoulder. Their height difference (which before had been minimal) would have seemed funny if the situation wasn't so serious. The anger seemed to seep out of Thalia's expression, and for a moment, Annabeth thought she might just hug Luke. Then the fierce look returned and she punched him in the stomach. Luke doubled over as she launched herself at him. Someone gasped. Thalia tackled Luke to the ground and continued to beat him with her fists and knees while he tried to protect his face.

"Hey! I said I'm sorry, okay?" Luke cried. Annabeth smiled, remembering how the two used to argue so often. It was the first time all three of them were together on reasonably friendly terms in… how long had it been? She turned to tell this to Percy, but he wasn't standing next to her. Instead, he was crouched next to Jason, who was sitting against the cliff face, hunched over, clutching his head. Piper had her hand on his shoulder, terrified, and Leo was kneeling in front of him, desperately trying to figure out what was wrong. Hazel and Frank looked horrified. Annabeth rushed over and dropped to her knees next to Jason, almost knocking Leo out of the way.

"Jason?" she said, "Jason, what's wrong?"

"I don't know!" Leo answered for him. "He was fine and then he just collapsed and grabbed his head and he says it hurts."

"Did you hurt you head in the fight?" Annabeth asked. Jason groaned. She took it as a no. "Jason, look at me. What happened?" Jason made no attempt at responding, and curled his fists in his hair. Annabeth looked around at the others for any kind of explanation, but nobody spoke up. Nico stood a few feet back, confusion rippling across his face.

"He's…" Nico started before pausing. "I don't know. He's not dying or anything, but he's not… I can't tell."

"Okay," Annabeth said, trying to remain calm, "Okay, the hunters have healers. We'll see what they can do." She stood up, and turned to the group of hunters. Percy followed her actions. The hunters seemed to be enjoying the fight that was still going on between Thalia and Luke. Thalia was yelling a lot at Luke, but she was talking so fast Annabeth couldn't make out what she was saying. Although from what she could hear, it wasn't anything good. Luke was holding out fairly well for someone who had clearly just been zapped several times, but Thalia definitely had the upper hand.

"Ladies!" Percy shouted at the hunters. Annabeth winced. It certainly got their attention, although not in a good way. Percy seemed pretty proud of his tactic. "We need a healer! Anyone who knows anything about medicine, we need you to help Jason." None of them rose to the opportunity.

"But he's a _boy,_" one of the hunters whined. This one had dark brown hair, and lots of freckles. The blonde girl from before was still watching the fight.

"Yeah, and he's also Thalia's brother! You really think she wants him to die?" Well played, Percy, well played. A murmur went through the crowd of girls, but they still seemed reluctant.

"Do you actually want Thalia mad at you?" Annabeth cried. Finally a short Asian hunter stepped forward.

"I guess," she said. "But only because it's Thalia's brother. We're not helping that guy over there." She jerked her head in Luke's direction. His hair stuck out to the sides and was streaked with ash. He was now trying to avoid Thalia's attacks and attempting to reason with her. It didn't seem to be working. She kept advancing on him, despite his pleas for a draw.

The hunter (Amy, as she introduced herself) inspected Jason's head. There didn't seem to be any injuries, so she moved on to questioning him.

"Are you sure you didn't break a rib?" she asked, sounding bored. Annabeth was pretty sure she could to better than this and wasn't really trying. After all, why would he be grabbing his head if he had a broken rib?

Jason moaned in response to her question. Amy sighed and continued her search for some sort of injury. She checked his pulse, breathing, and looked for any sort of discolouration that would indicate a lack of oxygen. She felt his arms, legs, face, and checked his back, then shrugged.

"Yeah, sorry. I don't know what's wrong with him. Give him some nectar, I guess," she said. Piper looked furious.

"You don't know what's wrong with him? What kind of a healer are you?" she cried. Amy shrugged again.

"A lousy one, according to you. Then again, what would I know after three hundred years of training as a healer?" Amy said. She stood up and wiped the sand of her hands, ignoring the look of infuriation on Piper's face, then made her way back to the crowd of hunters. They had lost interest in the fight between Luke and Thalia. It seemed to have been reduced to a verbal battle now. Annabeth was tempted to break it up, but didn't bother. They would have to say all this to each other at one point or another, so they might as well get it out now. Instead, Annabeth listened.

"Why would you even think that was a good idea?" Thalia was shouting.

"Well everyone kept telling me that my life was going to suck and – "

"So you decided it was a good idea to go blow up Olympus? Do you have any idea what it was like for me to wake up and find out about all that, on top of the fact that I had been gone for seven years?"

"Not as bad as when you turned into a tree."

"I can't believe you! You only ever think of yourself, don't you?"

"Who almost got us arrested because you wanted new shoes and couldn't wait for them?" Luke had a point there. Annabeth remembered the ill-fated theft well.

"That was a pair of _shoes!_ This was the _gods._"

"When did _you_ start siding with them anyway?"

"I never did! I still don't like them, but you freaked out over something that really wasn't such a big deal. They took my little brother away!"

"At least no one told you that you were going to betray everyone and have a horrible fate! Remember? That's what they did to me! Whenever they showed up it was to remind me that my whole life was going to be hell no matter how hard I tried. That's what they've always done. They've told people their fate and watch as the more they try to prevent it, the more they make it happen! It's sick! How can you support anything like that? How?"

The silence that followed was thick. Luke and Thalia stood three feet apart, facing each other, both breathing heavily. Neither of them looked angry any more, just upset, and very, very tired. Luke took a shuddering breath and shut his eyes. Then, much to everyone's surprise, Thalia stepped forward, and wrapped her arms around him. He tensed for a second, then hugged her back, burying his face in her hair.

Annabeth had rarely seen either one of them express so much emotion at once, and never in such a public place. The whole event seemed a little surreal, but Annabeth barely had time to grasp what was going on. Behind her, Jason moaned again and retched. Leo winced and Hazel quickly turned away, looking green. Annabeth had always felt bad for sympathy pukers.

Jason's retching managed to pull Thalia's attention away from Luke for at least a few seconds. She let go of him and sprinted to where her little brother sat, still leaning against the cliff. His fists were still clenched in his hair, his knuckles turning white. After one glance at Jason's condition, she looked from Annabeth to Percy, horrified.

"What's wrong with him?" she said. Percy shook his head.

"We don't know," admitted Annabeth, "Not yet. But we'll check him again once we get back to the ship." She squinted off in the distance for any sign of the Argo II, but she couldn't see it. Leo pointed back the way they'd come from the Doors of Death.

"We parked it over that way, just around those cliffs. Coach went back to it the second the fight ended. There's a game on," he said.

"Right. We'd better get him back to the ship then. He needs rest." Annabeth glanced around hopefully at Luke. "You're coming with us?"

"Guess so. I mean, the only other option is the hunters, and they're not too keen on me," he said. Annabeth didn't miss Percy's scowl, and she was sure Luke didn't either. The hunters, however, seemed satisfied with this, although some were still glaring at Luke, as if he'd been the one who'd hugged Thalia and not the other way around.

"I'm coming, too," Thalia insisted. There was a sudden whining protest from the hunters, but Thalia glared at them. "My brother's sick, guys. I'm not leaving him."

Frank gently wrapped his arms under Jason and lifted him off the ground, his head flopping lifelessly to the side. Jason gave yet another half-hearted groan and hung limply. As Frank turned to the ship, Leo flitted around him, trying to be of any sort of use.

"No, Leo, I don't need any help," Frank insisted, clearly bothered, but Leo ignored him. Annabeth wondered if this was still normal, or if the two had stopped fighting yet. One look from Hazel confirmed that they were still constantly competing. She rolled her eyes at Annabeth, who gave her a sympathetic look. She'd seen her fair share of overly competitive people, just within her own cabin.

Piper hopped along after Frank, fretting over Jason. Frank was a lot friendlier to her than he'd been to Leo. As they continued across the sand, Percy kept pace with Annabeth and wrapped his arm around her waist. She leaned on him lightly and sighed.

"At least we can see the sun again," he said. Typical Percy, always trying to find the bright side (pun intended).

"So uh," he looked back at Thalia and Luke, who were trailing behind everyone else. "Those two, huh?" Annabeth turned to look back at Thalia and Luke. They were walking side by side, deep in conversation, gently bumping each other with their hips and elbows.

"Oh." Annabeth faced forwards again. "No, they're just like that. There's nothing going on with them."

"Uh huh? Doesn't look like nothing."

"Really, they've always been like that. Besides, Thalia's a hunter and they haven't actually been on speaking terms for almost ten years, so I doubt they'll start hooking up now." Annabeth blinked. "Wow. Ten years."

"Long time," Percy commented.

"Yup." It _was _a long time. A very long time. She'd never thought how long it had been since that family of hers had been together. Only now did she realize how much she'd missed hanging out with Thalia and Luke. She looked back at them again, this time out of longing rather than curiosity. Her eyebrows pulled together, and she felt a little left out. However, they were stuck in their own little world and didn't notice her.

The Argo II was a lot further away than Leo had described it to be. "Just around those cliffs" was an understatement. The particular cliff in question jutted out several hundred feet from the mainland, and they had to walk around it. Frank had eventually agreed to Leo's help, and looked pleadingly at Nico, Piper, and Hazel. Piper had rushed forward, but Hazel had hung back, muttering something about an injured wrist, and Nico refused to go near Jason with no explanation. Annabeth's entire body already ached from the fight in Tartarus, and her composure was beginning to crack. Percy had lost his reserved expression long ago, and looked weary, annoyed, and exhausted. Thalia was practically holding Luke up, an impressive feat since he was almost a foot taller than her. When the Argo II finally came into sight, Percy made a strangled noise and wore a look of such relief Annabeth thought he might cry.

"'Just around the cliff,'" he grumbled, dragging his feet. "Thanks for nothing, Leo."

"Bought time you cupcakes showed up!" Coach Hedge shouted as the arrived at the boarding plank of the ship. He was still wielding his baseball bat, which he quickly pointed at Luke.

"Whoa there sonny, I know you," he yelled.

"Oh, for Christ's sake," Luke muttered, not in the mood to argue.

"Resurrect the Titans, will you? And then try to just waltz on my ship? Not today lad, not today!" He waved the baseball bat around as Luke made a pathetic attempt to board the ship. Thalia caught him before he fell into the water. Escaping from the underworld clearly took a lot out of you.

"Relax, Coach," Leo wheezed. He, Frank, and Piper and successfully dragged Jason on board and were now all trying to catch their breath. "He's on our side now."

The coach ignored him, though, poking Luke roughly with his bat. Luke coughed weakly and gave the coach a pitiful look that Annabeth recognized immediately. Luke wasn't so exhausted that he couldn't even stand up. Oh, he was tired all right, and plenty annoyed. But mostly he wanted to avoid looking like a threat, so he used the recent events to aid him. How he managed to manipulate people so easily, Annabeth had never understood. She also couldn't figure out how such a manipulator could be taken advantage of with so easily.

"But he's the enemy!" Coach protested, "Ressurecter of the Titans! Attempted destroyer of Olympus! Can't I at least attack him? I never get to attack anything anymore."

"You just spent an entire battle attacking monsters from Tartarus. Coach, please, there's something wrong with Jason. Don't you think that's more important than your outdated views of Luke right now?" Frank asked. Annabeth would have hugged him if she hadn't spent all of her remaining energy walking to the ship. Coach Hedge considered the idea for a moment before arriving to a grumbling conclusion.

"Well I guess," he said, "but we still have to deal with the Titan kid over there at some point!"

Piper and Frank carried Jason down to the infirmary. Annabeth expected Hazel to follow to tend to her wrist, but she didn't. She and Nico were standing off to the side, talking seriously in hushed voices.

The sun had barely begun to set, but Annabeth felt like doing nothing but sleeping for the next five thousand hours. She and Percy leaned against each other as they headed towards their rooms, vaguely aware of Leo explaining to Thalia and Luke where they would be staying. Percy collapsed on his bed fully clothed, so Annabeth took the liberty of turning off his light before leaving for her respective room. As she opened the door she felt someone tap her on the shoulder. Turning around, she came face to face with Leo.

"Aren't we going to talk about… y'know, _him_?" he hissed, jerking his head down the hall, where Luke was currently closing his own door. "And Jason?"

"Tomorrow," Annabeth said as she yawned. "Sleep now. Talk later."

Leo opened his mouth to argue, but Annabeth quickly shut herself inside her room. Like Percy, she fell asleep the second she hit the bed, fully clothed, except no one turned out the light for her.


	3. Chapter 3

_Guess who's going to be out of town for the next two months and won't have access to a computer or the internet! This girl! I will have days off from my camp job every couple of weeks though, so I'll still be updating during the summer. It will just be very infrequent. Even if there's three weeks between the updates, I promise they will come. 2-3 times in July and 2-3 times in August. So boo, less updating. On the other hand, woooo summer camp!_

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Chapter Three

For the first time in a very long time, Annabeth woke up by herself. At first she was suspicious. Surely someone was telling her it was time to get moving, or something had blown up, or the bell for breakfast had just rung. The digital clock glowed next to her bed, showing that it was 11 am. She'd been asleep for _sixteen hours_? That was a record for her.

Every inch of her body was in pain. Her knees protested feebly as she tried to get out of bed, and she ended up flopping back onto her pillow, enjoying the lack of danger.

The room smelled like it had before, of wood, oil, and laundry detergent. The familiar engines whirred beneath her, and Annabeth allowed herself to relax for once in her life. Realizing she was still in her ripped up jeans, she unzipped them and pulled them off, still under the duvet. Someone must have turned off the ceiling light, because the only source of light came from a small lamp on her desk. All her dirty clothes were on the floor where she'd left them before her unexpected trip to the Underworld. The photos of her and her friends from camp still lay on the ground next to her bed. A half-finished design was spread out across her desk, pencils and rulers littered everywhere. It was as if she'd never left.

A tentative knock came from the door. Annabeth tried to speak, but her throat was too dry and sore. She reached for a glass of water someone must have placed on the bedside table and chugged it, but the door had already creaked open. Piper was standing just behind it, peeking in. She smiled when she saw Annabeth.

"Oh, good. You're awake," she said. "We were going to wake you up if you didn't get up soon. You've been out for a while." Annabeth thought that was a bit judgmental. She'd just come out of Tartarus, for crying out loud. Surely she had the right to sleep a little later than usual? She pointed this out to Piper, but the daughter of Aphrodite shook her head, her braids whipping back and forth.

"No, you slept all through yesterday. Something like forty hours total?"

_"Forty hours?"_

"Yeah, Luke just got up a couple of hours ago. Percy's still out. Actually, can you help me with that? I tried waking him up a couple of minutes ago."

"And?"

"He threw a book at me."

"Ah." Annabeth heaved herself out of bed, ignoring the burning sensation in her feet and the agony in her joints.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Piper asked, looking concerned.

"Yep." Annabeth stretched her arms up. Ouch, bad idea. Pain ripped through her back and shoulders like they were on fire. She winced. Piper held out a green metal water bottle.

"Nectar?" she offered. Annabeth accepted it gratefully and took a couple of gulps. The pain began to fade a bit.

"I'll help you out in a minute," she told Piper. "First I desperately need a shower." Piper nodded and left, shutting the door behind her. Annabeth walked to the dresser and grabbed fresh underwear, then picked a pair of reasonably clean jeans off the floor and pulled out a dark red t-shirt from her pile of washed clothes that had not been put away. When she left her room to head for the showers, Piper was sitting on the floor in the hallway. She was blasting something that sounded suspiciously like Taylor Swift into her ears, and Annabeth wondered if Piper and Thalia were still getting along as well as they had during their first encounter.

As the hot water began to flow out of the showerhead, Annabeth felt like weeping with joy. Not that she had missed showering that much (she had, after all, grown up at a summer camp and lived on the streets), but simply because it was running water that wouldn't kill her. The steam rose around her, and Annabeth could feel all the muck and grit of Tartarus washing off her body. Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said about her mind. Annabeth wondered if she'd ever really be able to get those images out of her head. Still, soap was soap and she wasn't going to complain.

The shower must have lasted at least half an hour, but when Annabeth returned in her fresh clothes with clean hair, Piper was still sitting in the exact same spot as before. She looked up as Annabeth entered the hallway and pulled out her earbuds, stashing them, along with her ipod, in the pocket in her cutoffs.

"Right," Annabeth said, cracking her knuckles, "Time to get this show on the road."

She opened his door as silently as she could. A streak of light fell across the room and revealed a blanket cocoon, presumably containing Percy Jackson. It shifted slightly, but stayed as tightly wrapped as ever. Annabeth approached the bed with Piper following behind her, and almost killed herself tripping over a chair that had been tipped on its side. Had he tried to throw the chair at Piper, too?

Annabeth pulled back the covers slightly, and found Percy's head. He looked terribly innocent in his sleep for someone so guilty of trouble. A bit of shame washed over Annabeth as she considered her cruel plan to wake him. A gentle approach never hurt anyone, right?

"Hey, Percy," she said, ruffling his hair. He muttered something, but didn't open his eyes. Annabeth frowned.

"Percy, get up. You have to actually do stuff, it's been almost two days, and you can't just sleep all the time." She tried a little louder.

"No," Percy mumbled, "sleeping is my life."

"What about food?"

"Food and sleep. Life."

"You have to get up to have food," Annabeth said. The logical approach.

"Room service," Percy muttered. Right. Well, he chose the hard way then. Annabeth held her hand out for Piper's ipod and found some dubstep on it, then plugged it into the speakers next to Percy's bed. She paused the song, turned it up to maximum volume, then hit play. Piper took cover, holding her hands (wrapped in sweater sleeves) over her ears.

"WAKE UP PERCY!" Annabeth screamed as loud as she could. Her voice was still hoarse, but combined with the dubstep it had the intended effect. Percy's eyes flew open, and the rest of him flew out of the bed. He landed on the ground in a tangle of half-on jeans, blankets, and limbs. As he yelped in confusion, Annabeth went to his closet and pulled out some clean clothes.

"You. Shower now, then come eat. It's been like, two days," she yelled over the music. Percy finally succeeded in removing himself from his sheets and sat on the floor in his ripped shirt, and red boxers, giving Annabeth the most disapproving look he could muster in his state of disorder. His bandaged chest was visible beneath his ruined shirt. She flipped the main overhead light on and threw the clothes at him. Percy said something, but she couldn't hear it over the music.

"What?" Annabeth shouted. Percy cleared his throat and tried again, but Annabeth shook her head. He reached over to the speakers and turned off the dubstep.

"I said, _what do you mean two days_?" he said.

"Oh. Two days. Apparently that's how long we've been asleep for."

"Jesus. Actually?" he asked. Annabeth nodded.

"Well shi– " Piper cut him off.

"We're over Switzerland right now," she said. "Leo figured we'd better get out of the Mediterranean as fast as possible. So we took a vote and decided chocolate and cheese over Pripyat, which is where Chernobyl used to be. That's where Thalia had wanted to go. She's kind of took over for you guys since Jason's still out." Piper swallowed and looked down at the ground. Annabeth felt her heart drop. She had completely forgotten that Jason was hurt. Percy looked equally as guilty as she felt.

"Okay, well, I'll go have my shower now," he said, edging his way out of the room. Piper and Annabeth sat in silence for a minute, avoiding eye contact with each other.

"So… he's not better then?" she asked. Piper shook her head. "Did you figure out what's wrong with him?"

"No," Piper said, looking down. She sounded close to tears. "We all worked together, but nobody had any ideas. We even tried Iris-messaging Chiron, but he didn't know either. And Nico doesn't even want to help."

"Oh." Annabeth tried to find comforting words, but she couldn't. She'd never been good at making people feel better. Actually, she was interested in why Nico wanted nothing to do with the whole thing, but she had enough social skills to know that this was not the right time to ask.

Piper took a deep breath and stood up.

"Come on," she said. "Let's go get some breakfast…er, lunch, I guess."

The console room was full of people, more than Annabeth was used to. Or, at least, different than what Annabeth was used to. Frank and Hazel were laughing about something as Leo ran around checking pressures and filters while simultaneously shoving a massive piece of extra-garlicy garlic bread down his throat. Nico sat in the corner, nibbling on a turkey sandwich, his dark eyes flitting around the room from person to person. He nodded briefly at Annabeth as she walked in, then looked down at his lunch again. Luke and Thalia were fighting dramatically over a piece of pizza, fake sobbing and all. Luke tried started singing _My Heart Will Go On_, and was immediately shut down by everyone else, except Nico, who ignored him. They'd obviously discovered Luke's lack of vocal talent.

It was strange to see Thalia and Luke interact with Annabeth's current group of friends. They'd always seemed so distant and separate from people like Leo and Hazel, yet here they were, right in the middle of the supposed prophecy kids. It felt wrong, like they belonged to a separate world where the gods were evil and little girls got adopted in alleyways. A world where a Good Meal meant a stolen loaf of bread with some packaged cheese, and where kids never had to grow up. A world where there were no rules. Not the Argo II, not the stupid love triangles people got stuck in, not the Greeks and Romans, not casually touring around Europe. Annabeth felt a sudden, momentary flare of hatred for the other prophecy kids. They didn't know what hard demigod life was like, they didn't know what betrayal felt like, or abandonment, they didn't know how it felt to not know where your next meal was coming from, or how long you'd get to sleep for before the monsters came. They didn't understand what it was like to sneak out of your cabin at night to stay in another because you couldn't get the nightmares out of your head. They didn't, they couldn't, and they never would. They all had it_ so easy._

Luke and Thalia were _her_ friends, not theirs, they were _hers_. They belonged to the twisted nightmare fairytale world Annabeth had lived in with them.

Did she miss it?

No.

Who was she kidding?

Yes. She missed it. She missed them. They were _her_ friends.

Stupid, privileged prophecy kids.

Annabeth sat herself down next to Luke, claiming him and Thalia as her own.

"Hey munchkin," Luke said, "Have a good sleep?" Annabeth felt the loathing drain from her mind as suddenly as it had come.

"Meh, not bad. Could have been longer," she replied, helping herself to some of the pizza Luke and Thalia had been fighting over. Neither one protested.

"Oh yeah, I usually like to sleep for about three or four days at a time," Luke said, grinning at her.

"Well _you_ do," Annabeth said. "I don't."

"I was actually enjoying how much you guys were sleeping," Thalia sighed. "Nobody here argues with me about anything. I didn't have to hear anyone sing _I'm Blue_ for two whole days."

"You didn't have to hear it for ten years, so shut up. It's a good song," Luke said, "And no one fights with you because they're all too scared that you'll kill them if they do."

"I do not try to kill people who disagree with me. I only attack people who annoy me."

"Annoy you, disagree with you. Same thing." Annabeth waved her hand passively. Luke tried to stealthily take the rest of the pizza as the two girls argued, but Thalia caught him and instantly had a butter knife pointed at his head.

"See? Violence, violence. It's never the answer," Luke said.

"Oh, wouldn't you know," Thalia snapped. There was an uncomfortable silence between the three for a few seconds, broken when Percy walked in.

"Percy!" Thalia cried, clearly relieved that he had come to rescue them from eternal awkwardness. Percy jumped a bit. "I'm not a violent person, right? I don't just get mad at people all the time." Percy seemed a bit caught off guard by the question, and a bit nervous. He probably hadn't expected to be greeted by a question that required him to lie to Thalia's face.

"Uh, yeah. I mean yeah, you never get mad at people and attack them," he muttered, grabbing a piece of toast as he sat down next to Annabeth. She had heard about the not-quite-perfect end of the last hunter VS camp capture the flag game, and figured that Percy was probably praying that Thalia wouldn't get suspicious.

Percy wrapped his arm around Annabeth's waist, and she found herself once again sitting awkwardly between Luke and Percy, not really knowing who she should be paying more attention to. The older brother whom she had recently been reunited with, or the boyfriend that she hadn't seen for six months? She began to wish she had sat down next to Thalia instead.

Annabeth decided for the millionth time in her life that the best way to deal with an awkward situation was to ignore it. She pretended not to notice the way Percy glanced far too often in Luke's direction, or how Luke had the wicked gleam in his eye that was apparent whenever he had some kind of plan. Now was not the time to deal with friends who hated each other's guts, there were more important issues at hand. Leo was the only one who wasn't sitting around the table, so it was as good a time as any to bring up the remaining casualty.

"So you guys still have no idea what happened to Jason?" Annabeth inquired. Luke looked around expectantly, while Percy glanced hopefully at each person in the room. Hazel and Frank stopped laughing and looked solemn as Thalia's expression darkened. Leo stopped chewing, his mouth bulging with bread. He seemed to wilt as he sat down next to Piper. Annabeth hated to ruin the good mood everyone seemed to be in, but this was a pressing matter. She didn't miss how Nico avoided her eyes and continued to take little bites out of his sandwich. Hazel sighed in defeat.

"We all tried to figure something out but nothing made sense," she said.

"He's coughing, and kind of puking but nothing's coming up," Thalia added. Nice mental image there.

"Does he have a fever?" Luke asked. Annabeth was sure he only cared about Jason because he was Thalia's brother. She'd never seen him show this kind of concern for a guy he'd only met once.

"No, he's not hot or cold. It's weird, 'cause he says he feels cold and numb. But he's too weak to walk, and he's losing his voice, too," Thalia continued. "But he said it feels like… what was it he said?"

"He said he just feels empty, like there's nothing in his body, and he said his stomach feels sick," Frank said. Annabeth nodded. She had a theory.

"Okay, so this all happened right after we came out of Tartarus, right?" she said. "But what if we weren't the only things that came out?"

"What do you mean?" said Hazel, frowning.

"Well Leo, Percy, Jason all got possessed by those Eidolons, so maybe something came out of Tartarus like that, and it's making Jason sick," she explained.

"Some kind of demon," Thalia said.

"Exactly. And if that's the case, all we need to do is have Piper charmspeak it out of him."

There was a slight pause after Annabeth finished.

"But – " Nico started to say something, but was cut off by Leo.

"That's awesome!" he said, his face splitting into an enormous grin. "Damn girl, let's get this party started! To the leper we go!" He grabbed Piper's wrist and dragged her through one of the doors, everyone else following. Upon arriving at Jason's room, he seemed unable to contain his excitement and kicked the door open, bounding up to Jason's bed, where the son of Jupiter lay shivering under his blankets.

"Dude! You'd better thank Annabeth, she's saving your butt here!" he cried, pushing Piper towards the bed. She sat down and nervously played with the hem of her shirt. Leo gave Annabeth the tightest hug she'd ever received.

"Leo – can't breathe," she gasped. He let go, flashed her an apologetic smile, and then plopped himself down next to Jason's bed. Percy leaned on the bedpost and Frank stood a few feet back from Jason's bed, looking hopeful. Hazel peeked around Thalia's shoulder and smiled at Jason.

Jason blinked up at the sudden group of people surrounding him, looking very confused.

"What… what's going on?" he whispered. He certainly looked sick. His skin was very pale, making his scar stand out, and his hair seemed less blond than usual. Even his eyes seemed duller. Last time Annabeth had seen someone look this bad, it had been caused by a rather abusive Titan.

"Annabeth's figured out what's wrong with you, man," Frank explained as Leo nodded enthusiastically. "She thinks there's something possessing you, like the Eidolons, and Piper can get it out the same way, with her charmspeak."

Even Thalia was beaming, a rare sight. Luke, however, was not, despite being more prone to beaming than Thalia ever was. He stood in the doorway with his arms crossed, looking dead serious. When he caught Annabeth's eye, he raised an eyebrow and jerked his head in the direction of the bed. She got the message.

_You sure about this?_

Annabeth hesitated for a second, then shook her head. No. No she was not sure at all. It was a theory. She hadn't even seen Jason yet when she'd come up with it, and now they were all convinced that she had it figured out. Being a daughter of Athena had its downsides, and this was one of them: people think you're always right.

"Okay Piper, anytime you feel ready," she heard Leo saying. Jason blinked up at Piper with his dull, watery blue eyes. The daughter of Aphrodite took a deep breath and bit her lip.

"Whoever, whatever you are inside Jason, I wish to speak to you. You, as a separate being, not as Jason. Separate yourself." Piper's words flowed through the room, weaving themselves through the air and into the texture of the walls. Annabeth felt them pass, whispering, beckoning, through her hair and wrap around her mind, seeping in and dominating. Luke was looking impressed. He'd seen charmspeakers before – dated one even – but apparently Piper was really good.  
Nothing happened. Piper looked pleadingly at Leo, but he nodded in encouragement, and motioned for her to keep going.

"I will speak to you, the being inhabiting Jason Grace. You will leave his body, leave his mind and soul, and you will not return to it. Release Jason, and exit his presence." The voice tangled inside Annabeth's mind and spun like leaves falling to the ground. Nobody moved a muscle.

Annabeth knew immediately that it wasn't right, but she didn't want to be the one to break the hopeful silence that followed Piper's speech. After several painful seconds Thalia sighed.

"I guess it didn't work," she said. Annabeth hated to disappoint Thalia so much, but it had only been a theory, no promises guaranteed. Jason gave a hacking cough and clung to his blankets. A murmur of agreement with Thalia's statement flooded through the group as the mood quickly deflated. Thalia turned quickly and left the room, and Annabeth was sure she saw tears in her eyes. The others followed suit, each patting Jason's head or telling him to feel better soon. Leo threw his arm around Piper's shoulder as they walked away. Annabeth could hear Piper sniffling in the hallway.

Annabeth stood numbly in the corner. _It was only an idea_, she told herself. _You never said it was going to work._

"You okay?" Percy was standing right in front of her. Annabeth shrugged and tried to look indifferent, but Percy pulled her into a hug. She buried her face in his shoulder, inhaling his salty scent, and took a couple of deep breaths to calm down.

"I'm going to stay down here for a bit," she said as they released each other from the hug. Percy squeezed her hand and nodded. "Try to figure out what's actually wrong with him."

"Yeah."

"I – "

"Sorry about that," Percy said. "It's just, I guess no one's had any ideas, and everyone got so excited about it."

"Yeah." Annabeth looked down at her feet. "It was only an idea."

"It's okay. You can't always get things right away. Then you wouldn't be human," Percy told her, "I'm going to go actually have something to eat, but I'll come back later." Annabeth nodded.

"See you around," she said.

"Later, gator," Percy called over his shoulder as he shut Jason's door behind him. Annabeth sighed and ran her hands through her hair. She didn't even want to see the looks on everyone else's faces, but at least Percy understood. She couldn't get everything perfect the first time. Even Hermione took a while to figure out the basilisk was in the pipes, right?

"Cute." Jason's voice drifted over from the bed, and made Annabeth jump. He'd been so silent she'd forgotten he was actually conscious.

"Oh," she said, "Uh, thanks." Today was not her day as far as awkwardness was concerned. She'd only been up for a few hours and had already managed to sit between two guys who hated each other, and have a moment with her boyfriend while another person watched. She walked over to Jason's bed and pulled up a chair to sit in. He had shifted the pillows around and was now reclining a bit with a laptop resting on his legs.

"Any ideas?" he asked hoarsely. He didn't sound as hopeful as the others did, but Annabeth supposed that was just a part of being the sick one. Zero hope.

"I just got here, Jason, I can't say anything yet," she said. "Does your head still hurt?" Jason nodded slightly.

"Yeah. My everything hurts. But my head hurts the most."

"What is it, like a stabbing pain or –?"

"More of an ache," he explained. "I feel kinda dizzy all the time."

"Does it feel any different from two days ago?" Annabeth asked.

"Yeah. Everything's worse. I just can't do anything, and everything feels wrong."

"And they've given you nectar and ambrosia?"

"As much as anyone dared," Jason wheezed. Describing how you felt when you were sick was hard, so Annabeth tried to keep her patience. She decided to go with the physical assessment. Jason's pulse was weak but steady, and his breathing seemed fine, if a little shallow. His pupils didn't dilate properly in light and his whole figure seemed much more delicate than usual, which was really saying something. He didn't have any kind of obvious infection. Annabeth was starting to get annoyed.

_Intrigued,_ she told herself, _be intrigued, not annoyed. You can figure this out._

"Any luck?" Luke was standing in the doorway, quiet enough that neither Annabeth nor Jason had noticed him come in. Annabeth shook her head.

"Huh. Weird." Luke walked over to Jason's bed, stepping over a pile of clothes, and put his hand on Jason's forehead. Jason flinched.

"Yeah, sorry if it's kind of cold," Luke said. "He seems normal enough to me."

"I know. It doesn't make sense," Annabeth groaned. Luke laughed, which she did not appreciate. He'd always found how easily she got frustrated to be hilarious.

"Watcha doing?" Luke leaned over Annabeth to look at Jason's computer screen.

"It's this old sci-fi show that I love, but you – " Jason tried to explain, but Luke interrupted him.

"_Are you watching_ _Dalek?"_ He gasped.

"Uh, yeah. It's my favourite episode. You watch Doctor Who?" Jason seemed a little caught off guard by Luke's sudden enthusiasm.

"I _live_ for Doctor Who," Luke said.

"Who's your favourite companion?" Annabeth asked. It was a camp tradition that all the year-round kids watch the Doctor Who Christmas special together, and Annabeth had re-watched every season at least three times.

"I, uh, I guess I like Rose," Jason whispered. He was looking even paler than when Annabeth had first walked in.

"Aw, yeah! Me too!" Luke cried, giving Annabeth the smuggest look he could possibly achieve. Annabeth hated the character of Rose Tyler with a burning passion.

"What else have you got on here?" Luke minimized the episode of Doctor Who and started looking through the rest of Jason's TV shows.

"Four seasons of Friends, nice. Dexter, Arrested Development. This is just weird, you like the exact same shows as me. You have Amélie? That's sick!"

"Yeah. It made me want to go to Paris," Jason said. He was leaning back on his pillows with his eyes close now. Luke continued through all the movies on Jason's laptop, agreeing that every single one of them was awesome. Annabeth was impressed. Luke always seemed to have a pretty sporadic taste in, well, pretty much anything, and she had never seen anyone who liked so many movies and TV shows as he did. Jason seemed to have all of Luke's favourites covered. However, as Luke gained excitement, Jason seemed to be fading quickly. His breathing was getting shakier by the second, and Annabeth still wasn't sure what was wrong with him. But she'd run out of ideas for now. She'd have to get back to it later.

"Uh, Luke?" He looked up from Jason's computer and Annabeth raised her eyebrows, tilting her head towards the semi-conscious Jason. Luke nodded and put the laptop back on Jason's legs, restarting the episode of Doctor Who.

"I'll come back soon, okay Jason?" Annabeth said as they left.

"Mhm," Jason sighed. Luke shut the door behind them and the two started walking back to the control room.

"So he's not looking too good," Luke said.

"Duh doy. Way to state the obvious," Annabeth replied. "Did you actually have a reason to show up there, or did you just want to visit me?"

"Visit you? Good idea, we haven't really had much time to talk. Well, not alone, anyways. Just with the dolphin."

"Don't call him that. His name's Percy."

"Yeah, I'm sure he appreciates being called Seaweed Brain." Annabeth blushed.

"Whatever. So _did _you come down just to see me?"

"Pfft. Don't flatter yourself. You're not worthy of my presence," Luke said, looking down at her loftily. Annabeth stuck her foot out to trip him. He jumped over it. "Nah, they sent me down to tell you that everyone has meet up for a 'serious discussion.' Guess I'm really living up to my cabin's reputation." He snorted.

"Messenger of the Argo II. I like it," Annabeth said.

"Well, I don't."

"No shit, Sherlock. What's this 'serious discussion' anyway?" she wondered.

"From the looks of it, me." Luke looked down at his feet.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Don't worry. I'll defend you. Plus, they're all too afraid of me and Thalia to argue," she said.

"Good. And don't you mean 'Thalia and I?'"

"No. You wouldn't say 'they're all too afraid of I,' would you?" Annabeth pointed out. She couldn't help it. She was more than a bit of a grammar nazi. Usually she would have been annoyed at whoever had tried to correct her grammar, but she didn't really mind it with Luke.

"Whatever. It sounds smarter when you say _I_."

Because, Annabeth knew, what mattered to Luke was how it looked, not how it actually was.


	4. Chapter 4

_Hey, looks like I am still alive. So I'm back from camp for 22.5 hours, and now I'm returning. And I'll be back again in about two weeks, so expect a new chapter then._

* * *

Chapter 4

The entire crew (minus the coach, who was probably watching another game) was waiting in the control room around the table when Luke and Annabeth arrived. They all fell silent instantly when Luke pushed the door open. The quietness combined with the solemn looks made Annabeth feel like she'd just walked into a funeral.

"You." Thalia pointed at Luke. "Shoo." Luke held up his hands in surrender and turned to leave.

"You don't want to know how Jason's doing?" he called over his shoulder.

"No," Leo said. "I mean, we'll ask Annabeth." Luke shrugged and shut the door.

"I don't like him," Piper said immediately. Annabeth took the seat across from her.

"Great," Thalia said. "But unfortunately, we don't just go on gut instinct for this. Got a valid reason?"

"Just to be clear, we are talking about Luke, right?" Annabeth asked.

"No, we're talking about Jason," Percy said dryly. "That's why Piper said she doesn't like him."

"Just checking."

"Can I finish?" Piper said.

"Sure."

"Okay, I really don't like him – "

"I got that much," Thalia snorted. Piper gave her a look of disbelief and frustration. Annabeth's suspicions of a rocky relationship between the two were being confirmed.

"Well if you'd let me _finish_," Piper said indignantly. "He just seems wrong to me. Like, I was talking to him, and he was being nice and everything, but none of it seemed natural. It just seemed kinda forced, you know? I don't trust him."

"So you think he's fake," Frank said. Piper nodded. "I guess I kind of got that vibe from him."

"I don't know," Hazel muttered. "He seemed pretty honest when he was talking to me, but he did seem a little… off."

"Guys," Annabeth said. "It's _Luke_. He always seems kind of off."

"Why?" Leo leaned forwards. "Because he's secretly planning to kill everyone?"

"No!" Annabeth cried. These people were useless. "Probably because his life basically sucks when you get right down to it."

"How does it suck?" Piper frowned. "I mean, I know he lost the war and everything, but wasn't that kind of his fault? What did he have against the gods in the first place?" Leo and Frank nodded in agreement, but Hazel just looked curiously at Annabeth and Thalia.

"Gods, do you guys listen to anything I say?" Thalia cried. "I told you guys a million times in the last couple days, they abandoned him with his crazy-ass mom, and then ignored him."

"Well when you put it like that he kind of sounds like a spoiled little kid who's just desperate for attention," Annabeth pointed out. "_Toddlers and Tiaras_, almost. And I guess he is kind of starved for attention, but that's not why he tried to bring down the whole Western Civilization."

"Great. Explain it then." Frank leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. Annabeth sighed in frustration. Percy grabbed her hand and squeezed it. He and Nico hadn't said anything yet.

"Okay. I will. So Hermes and Luke's mom had a thing, blah blah blah, we all know how that part goes. But Luke's mom could see through the mist, and after Luke was born she decided to become the oracle."

"What, like Rachel?" Leo interrupted. Annabeth glared at him and he shriveled back into his chair.

"Yeah, like Rachel. But at that time, apart from her not being a virgin, Hades' curse was still on the oracle – long story, I'm not going to explain it – so instead of gaining the power, Luke's mom just saw a whole bunch of stuff in the future and it drove her insane. She saw what was going to happen to Luke, and like, 9/11 or something, and she lost her shit over it and just went psycho.

"Then, rather than bringing Luke to camp or actually looking after him, Hermes just left him there with his unstable, hallucinating mother rather than try to help, even if it interfered with the future. She never stopped talking about Hermes, and she would have these weird fits where she would I guess attack Luke, and it really freaked him out. So eventually he started to really hate Hermes for extremely valid reasons, and when he was nine he'd had enough. He packed up and left."

The room had fallen silent again. This time it really did feel like a funeral.

"Luke kept wandering around for a few years, living on the streets, or in people's sheds and stealing stuff to stay alive. He didn't even have a weapon most of the time, he would just defeat any monster he came across with a golf club. Apparently he made a couple of mortal friends, but they were really lame or something, so he never stuck around too long. Then when he was eleven – eleven, right? – he met Thalia and they started traveling around, hitchhiking across Minnesota, or Colorado, or wherever. Then I met them, and it was all fine for a little while, until the other gods realized who Thalia was. Children of the Big Three were still illegal at the time. A bunch of monsters got sent after us, and we did have plans to head for Canada, I think, but that's when Grover – you guys know Grover, right? He showed up and brought us to camp.

"We got stuck in a Cyclopes cave, and everything was crazy, and then right at the border of camp, Thalia sacrificed herself to keep the monsters back and save us. Zeus turned her into a tree, and me and Luke ended up at camp."

Frank and Hazel were staring at Thalia. She seemed uncomfortable with all the attention, so Annabeth kept talking.

"Luke wasn't too happy for a while, obviously, and he made other friends – Lindsey, Scott, Finn – but he still spent a ton of time training, way more than anyone else at camp. Then when he was seventeen he got the quest. It didn't go so well and – "

"What exactly happened on the quest?" Percy interrupted. "I mean, I keep hearing people mention it, but no one actually explains what went so wrong on it."

Annabeth sighed and looked around at the eager faces. They'd definitely all heard about how nobody went on quests for a few years. And it was true that nobody would ever have explained what happened. No one really knew what had happened.

"Okay," she said, "So Luke got the quest to go steal one of the golden apples from the Hesperides' garden. He went with Lindsey, this unclaimed girl who was an amazing fighter, and Mike, a son of Ares who was actually really good at strategizing. I tried to convince him to take me, too, but I was ten at the time, so obviously he said no. They all left together, and then two weeks later Luke and Lindsey came back saying they didn't want to talk about it. Luke had the huge cut on his face, and Lindsey's arm was a mess."

"But what actually happened?" Percy said again. "And what about Mike?"

"Hold on. I'm getting there.

"They came back without Mike, both of them gushing blood. Once we cleaned them up we asked what had happened. They told us everything up until when they got to the garden and then… well, they just kind of stopped talking. Eventually we managed to piece together that they had a plan, but Luke went off from the plan and the dragon attacked him. And then Lindsey kept insisting that the wind was all weird. And somewhere in all that, Mike got killed.

"Neither of them were ever really the same after that. Lindsey got a lot shakier, and Luke got a lot more distant. She kept saying she didn't blame him for what happened to Mike, but it was pretty obvious that Luke blamed himself, even if she didn't."

"So was it his fault?" Frank asked.

"I don't know. Probably. I'm pretty sure Lindsey did blame him at least a little, but she never said it. She was a couple years older than Luke, so after that year she left to go to college. I think she's in Seattle now, still alive.

"Like I said, Luke was never really the same after the quest. He was just as angry at the gods as he had been right after Thalia got turned into the tree, and spent almost all of his time training. Somewhere around then he started having dreams with Kronos, and Kronos convinced him that a world where the Titans ruled would be better. In 2004 at the winter solstice he stole Zeus's lightning bolt. This pissed off Zeus, and for whatever reason he decided Percy, who'd just arrived at camp, was the culprit, despite the fact that there was a very talented thief that openly hated the gods who had just visited Olympus.

"So Luke worked with Kronos, making battle plans. He mapped out a strategy to bring Thalia back and tried to get her on his side in this whole thing. He swam in the river Styx to become invincible, and eventually Kronos took over his body. After a year of trying to fight back, Luke finally regained control and killed Kronos and himself. He finally realized that the Titans were no better than the gods, but that doesn't mean that he has to like the Olympians. They haven't exactly been generous to him."

Annabeth looked around the room in the silence that followed her story, satisfied but annoyed when no one could make eye contact with her. Thalia glared at Piper with total disregard, occasionally shooting glances at Leo, Hazel, and Frank. After a few moments Nico broke the silence.

"My sister would still be alive if it weren't for him," he said bluntly. "If he'd never kidnapped you, Bianca wouldn't have gone on that stupid quest." Hazel looked curiously at Nico. Apparently he hadn't told her much about Bianca.

"I – I know. But he made a mistake, and he knows it was wrong," Annabeth said gently. Nico rolled his eyes.

"It's still his fault."

"He's different now," Percy said. It was the first input he'd had. "I still don't really like him, but he's definitely not going to try to kill us all or anything."

Nico crossed his arms and looked away. He didn't seem to pleased with how the conversation was going. Annabeth felt a little guilty. Percy and Luke didn't get along very well, he was obviously only defending Luke because she had been so determined to keep him around. Well, that was loyalty for you. Defend your enemy to help your friend.

"From what I've heard he's an amazing fighter," Frank said, looking at Thalia. "He might be useful to the team, even if he's not always the nicest person."

"Exactly," Annabeth agreed. She'd forgotten that Frank was also a strategist.

"Yeah, but don't tell him that," Piper said. Leo nodded. "Have you heard the way he talks about himself? Even just this morning!"

"That guy needs to get his ego deflated," Leo agreed. "Even if he is kinda cool."

"Hold on, did you just say Luke has a huge ego?" Thalia said.

"Well… doesn't he?"

Thalia leaned back in her chair, her eyebrows knit together. She frowned, then looked back at Piper and Leo, and sat forward leaning her elbows on the table.

"Piper, Leo, let me ask you something," she said. "When confidant people gain power, do they willingly hand it over to someone else?"

"Well – "

"Are they really easy to manipulate and spark hatred in? Do they generally have pasts that they get scared of or feel horrible about?" Thalia glanced around the table, looking everyone in the eye. "No. They don't."

Annabeth had never really thought of that before, but it was true. Luke's seemingly never ending supply of narcissism and confidants was really a bunch of lies. She thought about all the times she'd talked to him, all the hours they had spent together, and how uncommon it was for him to truly be happy. She thought of how hard he'd always been on himself, how hard he'd pushed himself, always trying to beat his own record. He'd hated the gods, and hated his father, and, in the end, he hated himself. Annabeth could think of a thousand times he'd disappointed himself. The quest, not being able to save Thalia, even the games of capture the flag where they hadn't won. Even when he did succeed, he'd never seemed as happy as he should have been about it.

"Luke has a ridiculously low self-esteem," Thalia continued. "And that's what you get when one parent's insane and the other one ignores you. You feel worthless. Top that off with a couple of major failures, even if they weren't entirely your fault, and you've got a recipe for depression."

"And you guys said Kronos started talking to him after the quest," Leo said. "Right after a big failure. So he would have been most vulnerable then." Thalia nodded.

"And then with Kronos egging him on he never felt better," Hazel added. "And he just kept getting more and more angry at the gods."

"But that's all over now, so he should be able to get better," Percy said.

"Hopefully." Thalia smiled a bit. "More or less. It's been a while, so it might take some time."

"You know this is great that we can all help Luke get some self-esteem and everything, but he still hates the gods," Frank said. "And we're kind of trying to help them with this whole problem with Gaea."

"Dude, I'm not a big fan of the gods either," Percy said. "They're selfish, lazy, and really annoying. Me, Piper, and Jason had to put on this big show for Bacchus before he'd even think about helping us with defeat Ephialtes and Otis, and then he took all the credit for it."

The entire table was staring at him in disbelief. Percy held his hands up in defense.

"Hey, I'm not going to try to burn them to the ground guys! I'm just saying, I don't like being their pawn, but I still put up with them."

"So you think Luke will, too?" Hazel inquired.

"He didn't before," Leo threw in.

"Yeah, but his brilliant plan to bring them down didn't work to well, so he'll probably cooperate a little better now. He did for a long time," Annabeth said.

"I still think – " Piper started to say something (Thalia glared at her), but Nico cut her off.

"Look, can we just vote? We're going to start going in circles soon, and pretty much everything's been put out there. Luke's a traitor, but he regrets it and is probably depressed or something. Can't we just come to a verdict now?" he groaned.

"Fine," Thalia said.

"Should we write our vote on pieces of paper so that no one's pressured?" Frank asked.

"Nah." Annabeth shook her head. "Either way, it's going to be pretty clear who's not happy with the outcome. Right then. Everyone who wants Luke to stay on the Argo II, raise your hand."

Thalia's hand shot up while Annabeth raised her own. Percy slowly raised his hand, as did Hazel. Leo shrugged and lifted his arm.

"And those who want him gone?"

Nico raise his hand in grim determination, along with Piper and Frank.

"We just can't trust him," Frank explained to a very annoyed looking Thalia. "You said it yourself. He's too unstable."

"That's not what I –"

"You got your way anyway, so what does it matter?" Nico said coldly. Thalia stood up, but Annabeth grabbed her arm and pulled her back down.

"Shouldn't we at least get the coach to vote, too?" asked Piper.

"It wouldn't make a difference," said Frank. "It's five – three. Even if he sided with us, which he probably would, they'd still have more."

"Okay then." Annabeth gulped and shifted uncomfortably. It felt as if a large chasm had appeared in the middle of the table, separating their team. Those who wanted Luke there, and those who didn't. Maybe Frank had a point and it would have been a good idea to do an anonymous vote instead. "Should we, uh, call Luke back in then?"

A murmur of agreement spread around the table. Frank was looking unhappily at Leo and Hazel. Great. Just what those three needed. Thalia stood up and opened the door. Luke was sitting against the wall outside, but not the way people usually would. He was doing an actual wall-sit, his back flat against the wall, legs at 90 degrees. Typical. Cope with mental stress by adding a physical distraction.

"So? Deal or no deal?" he asked, looking up at Thalia.

"Deal," she said. "Welcome aboard." She offered him her hand, which he grabbed and used to pull himself up off the wall. They returned to the table, Luke taking the last empty seat, right between Thalia and Piper. He looked around the table, assessing the varying levels of friendliness. Annabeth hoped dearly that he wouldn't judge, because it was pretty obvious who had voted against him.

After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, Piper spoke.

"So, Annabeth," she said. "Did you figure out anything else about what's wrong with Jason?"

"He likes Rose Tyler, for one thing," Annabeth muttered.

"Sorry?"

"Nothing," she said. "No, I couldn't tell anything. I've never personally seen anything like this. I've heard of all kinds of mysterious illnesses, but I don't know how to tell them apart."

"He doesn't have the plague, does he?" Percy said. Annabeth rolled her eyes. "What, it's possible, isn't it? Didn't it survive in prairie dogs or something?"

"I used to feed those things," Piper whispered. "Am I going to die?"

"Dude, we have a plague carrier on the ship," Leo said, raising his hands dramatically over the table. "We're_ all_ doomed, whether we fed prairie dogs or not."

"Whoa, wait, he actually has the plague?" Hazel asked.

"_No_," Annabeth said. "There are way more signs for the plague. He'd be rotting from the inside out, and he's pretty obviously not doing that. Also he'd have black spots on him, and he'd be coughing up blood. He's not coughing up anything."

"We can eliminate cancer, right? I'm pretty sure he doesn't have cancer," Luke said. _Thanks for that contribution, Luke_. "And don't most infections usually involve coughing up at least something? Some kind of body fluid?"

"Exactly. So we can rule out the flu and a ton of other viruses," Annabeth confirmed.

"Piper told me before you came back that they've given him tons of nectar and ambrosia," Percy said. "But it didn't do anything. What can be so bad that nectar and ambrosia don't even help?"

He looked around the table, but no one answered him. It was hopeless, Annabeth decided. None of them had any ideas to begin with, and now half of the crew didn't like each other because of this whole thing with Luke. Annabeth noticed the shifty, annoyed glances being passed around. Piper and Leo were avoiding eye contact, but every now and then Piper would throw Leo a slightly disdainful look. Frank was glancing anxiously between Hazel and Leo. Nico was glaring at Thalia, still. He hadn't said anything yet about Jason. Annabeth wished he would. After all, he was the expert on death, and Annabeth hoped he could just tell them that it wasn't life threatening.

"I guess I've seen something like this once before," Frank said cautiously. Everyone seemed to perk up. "But it was on a soap opera."

"Wow," Luke said. "_Reliable_."

"Whatever," Frank continued. "But the point was that the woman's body was just shutting down, kind of like what Jason's doing. And she was just dying from old age because her body couldn't keep up anymore."

"He is _not _dying from old age," Thalia snapped.

"I know," said Frank, looking taken aback. "But I was just thinking, maybe he's not sick. Maybe his body's just shutting down for whatever reason, and we can't stop it."

"Fun," Leo said miserably.

"What show was this?" Luke asked.

"ER."

"Huh. That's still on?"

"No." Frank shook his head. "That was the finale."

"Well, if you're all done talking about soap operas, we can move on," Annabeth said. "Anyone got any better ideas?"

"I'm not very good at telling if people are going to die, but Nico can," Hazel said nervously. The gaze of the room shifted expectantly towards Nico. He took a deep breath. No escaping now.

"Okay, he's not dying," he said. Piper let out the huge breath she'd been holding. "But he's… I don't know. I'm working on it. He's not okay, I know that."

"But he's not dying," Leo repeated. Nico shrugged.

"Well, no. He's not. But he's still not doing very well," he said.

"Hey, when did ER get cancelled? That's been on for years." Luke said.

"April," Frank told him.

"Bummer."

"Luke, forget about the show. It really doesn't matter," Annabeth groaned.

"Speak for yourself, I used to watch that at camp during – "

"It's a _soap opera_. I think it's time for you to reassess what you value in life."

"Well excuse me," Luke said. "but Jason also likes it. He had at least three seasons of it on his computer."

"That doesn't make it relevant to his current health situation."

The fruitless, hopeful discussion continued for another hour, ideas coming up only to be shot down. By the time the group dispersed there was a definite gloom settling in on the ship.


	5. Chapter 5

_I'm sure all of you people not reading this are thrilled about this update. Point is, I just want this to be available for people to read. I'll just bask in my own glory and brilliance. You're all missing out so, so much._

* * *

Chapter 5

Before Annabeth, Leo, Piper, Jason, and the coach had left for Camp Jupiter, Will Solace had offered to go with them. He had pointed out that they'd probably need a healer at some point, and they didn't have one. They'd turned him down, but Annabeth regretted that now. She'd assumed they'd have been able to find a Roman healer if they really needed one. So much for that plan.

Annabeth never really liked too many of the Apollo kids. She supposed that Will qualified as a friend, but most of them were far too excitable, showy, and extravagant for her taste in friends. However, given the recent turn of events, she was seeing how it may have been useful to have an Apollo kid with them. They were excellent healers, and, as everyone's mood grew steadily gloomier through the day, she really could have done with their optimistic spirits, despite how they usually annoyed her.

After dinner Annabeth found herself sitting next to Hazel, outside on the top deck. The mountains rose around them, clouds hovering around the peaks. It was the first time Annabeth had really gotten a good look at their surroundings. Above the ship lay thin, wispy streams of clouds, while below them green stretched across the valley at the base of the mountains. She could see countless rivers running down the sides of the majestic slopes, and the icy points they came from. It was spectacular.

"Why's everyone suddenly so miserable? It wasn't like we were sure of anything to begin with," Annabeth wondered, wrapping herself more tightly in her sweater. The clouds had set a thin layer of mist around the ship, making it cold and damp.

"I hate to put this much pressure on you, but we were all kind of depending on the fact that you would know what was wrong with Jason," Hazel said. Annabeth looked down at her. Hazel was buried in a dark blue windbreaker several sizes to large for her, shuffling her feet. She didn't look any happier than the others.

"You guys were all relying on me?" Annabeth said. She didn't want to sound narcissistic, but this wasn't entirely surprising. Still, she could already feel the pressure building on her.

"Yeah. I mean, we spent the past couple of days trying everything we could. Even the coach couldn't figure it out. Thalia said Luke wouldn't have an answer, and no one was betting on Percy to have a stroke of brilliance, so we were all waiting on you." Hazel looked up at her. "Is that okay?"

"No, no, that's fine. I just need more time to figure it out. I think I might have an idea," Annabeth lied. Better to let them live in hope. Hazel studied her carefully.

"You have no clue, do you?"

Annabeth sighed in defeat. She didn't feel like fighting.

"No. I don't know what's wrong with him."

"Thanks anyway." Silence hovered between the two girls, but it was a comfortable silence. Annabeth had never really known Hazel that well, but she liked her. She was pretty laid back, didn't push for small talk, and she seemed sweet.

On the other side of the deck, Percy, Leo, and Piper were playing cards as Frank watched. Thalia sat nearby, headphones on, listening to music. Luke was nowhere to be seen, but Annabeth knew what he was doing: training. He was always training, even if there was no goal in the end. She thought about what Thalia had said. She supposed it was true. Luke was running in circles, always trying to beat himself.

Nico was also missing, but he was so quiet these days, Annabeth hardly noticed if he was in the room.

"I almost wish some monster would attack us, just to get my mind of everything that's going on," Hazel said suddenly.

"I hear there are giants in this part of Europe. Maybe we could go look for some."

"Better than sitting around here." Another pause.

"Hey, Hazel. If you don't mind me asking, why did you vote for Luke to stay?" The question had been bothering Annabeth all day. She figured Leo had been convinced by the messed up childhood thing, (after all, he knew all about that) but she couldn't reason out why Hazel would want Luke around. She hadn't really liked him.

Hazel took a deep breath before answering.

"You know how I was dead, right?" she said. Annabeth nodded. They now had four people on the ship who officially should have been dead: Nico, Hazel, Thalia, and Luke.

"Well, my mom screwed up before we both died. She got tricked into helping Gaea, and they were going to punish her. But she made a mistake. She deserved a second chance. And besides, I got a another chance to live. So I guess I believe in second chances," Hazel explained.

"Makes sense. But even after trying to destroy Olympus? You think he still deserves a second chance?"

"Yeah. People make mistakes, but we shouldn't judge them for that. Also…" Hazel looked away. "Don't tell anyone this, but I really hate my dad, too."

"You do?" Annabeth was surprised by this. In fact, most of her surprise came from the fact that Hazel had the ability to hate someone. She'd always seemed so careful to be nice, even with the whole Leo and Frank thing.

"Yeah. I didn't see him for my whole life, and then he shows up on my twelfth birthday, gives me a present, and expects me to run into his arms and say that I love him or something," Hazel said. "He just abandoned me and my mom. He left us to try to survive by ourselves, and then expects us to love him. It wasn't easy for a woman to make a living back then. What kind of a parent does that?"

"The Olympian kind, unfortunately," Annabeth said. "I think we've all had our fair share of bad parenting. Luke just got more than usual."

"Being a demigod sucks," Hazel sighed.

"Well, aren't you all sunshine and rainbows today."

"Sorry, it's just been really hard this past little while. First you guys were gone, then Jason got sick. It's been tough."

_Oh, that's too bad. At least you knew where you were going to sleep. At least you have enough food all the time. _Annabeth felt her anger at the other prophecy kids resurface. Having Luke and Thalia around was bringing back all sorts of memories, some fantastic, and some that put others' suffering to shame. Sure it was selfish (she was talking to a girl who had _died_) but Annabeth felt like she'd had it harder than the other kids. _They'd_ never been running from monsters _and_ gods while living on the streets. _They'd_ never been to Tartarus and back.

Annabeth swallowed back her pride and tried to think of something comforting to say. It wasn't easy.

"Sucks," she said.

"How did you guys make it out of Tartarus anyway? Even Nico couldn't find a way out," Hazel asked.

"Oh." Annabeth hadn't really thought about how they'd found the Doors of Death. "We just kind of followed Luke around. Son of Hermes and all, I guess he can find his way out of the Underworld if he has to."

"That's cool."

It was getting pretty cold out, and Annabeth desperately wanted to go hide from everyone in her room and work on the temple design she hadn't been able to finish, but social expectations kept her sitting next to Hazel. Still, there had to be an excuse to leave.

"I'm kind of tired," Annabeth lied. "I'm going to go back to my room."

"After sleeping for two days?"

"Yeah." Annabeth stood up. "Fighting your way through Tartarus is tiring, okay? And terrifying, we were surrounded by Gaea the whole time."

"Guess so. I think I'll come in too, it's getting cold out here."

The two girls walked in silence to their rooms, passing Piper, Percy, Leo, and Frank. They were all too into their game to look up, except Frank, who waved as they walked past. Hazel split off to go to her own room, and Annabeth finally had a chance to be alone.

It wasn't that she was lonely, or didn't like people. Growing up at camp had forced her to be in another person's presence almost 24/7. But sometimes Annabeth just liked to have a break and think by herself for a bit. She sat down at her desk and wiped the dust off of her half-finished plan for a temple. It was comforting to be back at her desk, designing buildings again. Something familiar and known in such a chaotic time. After all, how could they expect her to know what was wrong with Jason? Architecture, that's what she knew, not medicine.

Around nine Percy showed up. His nose was red, and Annabeth figured he must have been outside the whole time.

"Hey," he said, and sat down on her bed.

"What's up?" she swiveled her chair around to face him.

"Not much. We just haven't had much time together lately." Percy shrugged. Annabeth got up from her chair and sat next to him.

"Come on, between saving the world doing activities at camp, when do we ever have time together?" she said.

"True. You know, last September I was worried that life was going to get boring without a war. But honestly, I don't think I'd mind a boring life."

"I don't even remember what the words 'boring life' mean anymore," Annabeth sighed. "It's been so long since there was actually a time when I could just sit and do nothing. It's just always been plans, fights, and training."

"I thought being at camp year round was kind of boring. That's what you always told me, anyway."

"And by boring I meant we all drove each other insane because there were so few of us and we saw each other all the time," she said.

"I don't know, I could do with seeing you all the time." Percy grinned at her.

"Was that an attempt at flirting?"

"It was a _successful_ attempt at flirting. There's a big difference."

"Especially for something so rare," Annabeth teased.

"Hey, all my flirting is successful."

"Yeah?" Annabeth wrapped her arms around his neck.

"Seems to have worked this time." Percy leaned in and kissed her. Finally they had some time together, alone, without Luke, or monsters, or anything else. Bliss. Annabeth could just forget everything that had gone wrong in the past couple of weeks.

They lay next to each other in silence, leaning in, enjoying each other's company. Every now and then they talked a bit about nothing in particular, but they mostly relaxed. Percy's face was inches from her own, and as they were about to kiss again, a thought struck Annabeth. She sat up. Percy looked severely disappointed

"Have you called your mom?" she asked.

"We were cuddling and about to make out and now you're talking about my mom," Percy said in disbelief. "Aren't there rules against bringing up parents in this kind of situation?"

"Yeah, but I bet she's freaking out. I mean, she knows that you're alive, and we told her we were heading to Camp Jupiter, but she hasn't heard from you since. Plus, someone's probably told her about the Romans coming to invade…"

"Oh. I should probably do that then. Tell her how Tartarus was. Or not. She might just freak out more." Percy got up off the bed, stretching and trying to fix his hair. It was all over the place, making it obvious that he had not visited Annabeth for a diplomatic discussion.

"She worries about you, you know?" Annabeth said. "Usually I'm off with you on all the crazy adventures and stuff, and she's left alone. It was weird, when I actually got to see her without you there. It's like she kind of gets left behind, and she's used to it. But she doesn't like it."

"Yeah. That's crossed my mind every now and then," Percy muttered. He looked extremely guilty, and Annabeth regretted mentioning Sally. Still, it was important. He hadn't seen her in over seven months, and it was upsetting both of them. "Can I borrow your phone? You do still have it, right?"

"Sure," Annabeth pulled it out of the drawer in her bedside table and tossed it to him. She hadn't brought it on her quest to find the statue of Athena. Gods, that seemed like so long ago, but it had only been a couple of weeks. "Don't bother bringing it back, I'm going to sleep now."

"Really?" Percy glanced at the digital clock on the table. It was almost eleven. "Yeah, guess so. G'night."

"Night." Percy waved dramatically to her, arms wheeling, as he shut the door behind him, and Annabeth smiled back. She changed into her pajamas (dear gods, _pajamas_. How she'd missed them) and brushed her teeth, the minty fresh goodness enveloping her. Funny how little things like that always seemed so insignificant, but they were so nice. She had gone for months without the regular use of pajamas and toothpaste before, with Luke and Thalia, but that had been more fun than the unplanned trip to Tartarus.

She could have written and ode or a love song to toothpaste, that beautiful creation.

Then came the trouble of actually falling asleep. No matter how many nightlights she kept on (seven) to get rid of the dark, or how often she pressed her hands over her ears, no matter how many times she told herself that she was safe on the ship now, the noise and images kept flooding through her mind. The crushing walls, beastly howls, unearthly-looking creatures that came from the depths of the Earth itself. The rushing storms and dreadful silences. Never ending darkness full of spirits and demons. Cries and wails from the evil souls that resided down there.

Tartarus. It was literally hell, and it haunted Annabeth. Now that she wasn't distracted by the others, or collapsing from exhausting, the memories wouldn't leave her alone. They swarmed every happy thought she came up with, like a sea of the dementors she feared so much when she was young, and she was incapable of producing a patronus. She could remember every detail, but they all blurred together, time being irrelevant. Percy bleeding, and her and Luke fighting to keep him alive. Annabeth forced the memory out of her head. She didn't want to think about the rocky arm that had lashed out and hit him with full force, or how they had to drag him away and use all their remaining nectar.

When her and Percy had curled up together on her bed, she had noticed it, the newly uneven shaping of his chest. She didn't like it.

Finally Annabeth gave up on sleep. She lay under her covers, staring up at the metal ceiling. There were a few scratches on it. One particular scratch looked like and eye… A huge, monstrous, insane eye looking down at her…

That was it. Annabeth shut her eyes tightly and rubbed them hard with her fists before opening them again. She rolled out of bed, put on a purple hoodie from the pile of clothes on her floor, and walked barefooted out of her room and down the hall. At the end of the corridor, the last of the spare rooms, she stopped in front of the wooden door and knocked. No one answered. It was well past midnight, but Annabeth was sure he wasn't sleeping either. And if he was, too bad. She'd woken him a thousand times before, he wouldn't be mad.

Annabeth opened the door as quietly as she could, so as not to wake anyone else. Seeing as she had just returned from Tartarus, the coach probably wouldn't be too mad at her for sneaking out again but, you could never tell with that goat.

As Annabeth had predicted, Luke was not asleep. He was lying on the bed, wearing borrowed pajamas, listening to someone's ipod. Annabeth shut the door and he looked up.

"Can't sleep either?" he asked, taking out one headphone.

"No," Annabeth whispered. Luke sat up and leaned back against the wall, patting the space to his left on the bed. Annabeth climbed up next to him and sat down, curling her knees up to her chest and leaning against Luke. He wrapped an arm around her and ruffled her hair, prompting her to swat his hand away. She didn't like it when he did then. But, come to think of it, she wouldn't want him to stop.

"Whose pajamas are those?" she asked.

"Jason's. Apparently we're the exact same size." That seemed strange. Luke had always seemed so much bigger than Jason, but right now, he _did_ seem to be the same size. Then again, Luke had always been so much older than Annabeth that he just permanently seemed bigger than any of her friends could ever be.

"His ipod, too?"

"No." He shook his head. "It's Leo's. He's got… interesting taste."

"Good interesting, or bad interesting?"

"Beyoncé and Metallica interesting."

"So really random interesting," Annabeth confirmed. That made sense. This was Leo they were talking about.

"Basically. So, is there any particular reason I am being blessed with your presence? Or are you just here because you only talk about important things at night?" Luke grinned at her. As much as she wanted to deny it, what Luke said was true. Back at camp Annabeth had frequently interrupted Luke's sleep when she was having bad dreams, or something was bothering her.

"Important things? You mean things directly related to my mental state?" Annabeth asked. Luke raised an eyebrow and continued to stare at her. Right. Skipping the banter.

"I just miss hanging out with you," she admitted. "The past few years have just been crazy, and you weren't there, and I spent so long not telling anyone anything. I missed you so much, but I wasn't even allowed to say anything about it."

She hadn't wanted to talk to anyone else, either. Her misery had stayed buried most of the time, only occasionally making a visible appearance. Internalized pain was always the worst, yet Annabeth subjected herself to it over and over.

Luke reached over with his other arm and pulled her into a hug. She wrapped her arms around his neck, very differently to how she had with Percy, and forced her tears back. Luke had been like her therapist, a journal almost, the person she had talked to about pretty much anything private. Sure, Percy was there, but he didn't listen like Luke did. Luke was her family, far closer than her dad and stepfamily had been. She had spent countless nights in the Hermes cabin, refusing to go back to her own, sharing Luke's bed between the two of them. That probably wouldn't work so well now, and Annabeth didn't want to test Percy and Luke's relationship any more.

"Yeah," Luke said, his voice muffled by her hair. "I missed you, too. That was pretty much the hardest part of leaving. I didn't say good bye properly. I'm… I'm sorry. About everything."

"It's okay," Annabeth said. Luke shifted so that he could look down at her doubtfully. He didn't say anything, but she'd had enough practice reading his facial expressions: he didn't think it was okay at all. After a few more moments, they let go of each other and went back to sitting side by side. It hadn't exactly reached a point of awkwardness, but hugging someone only provided so much comfort, and they had reached that limit. Luke broke the brief silence.

"What about you, though? What's happened in the past few years? I missed an election, right?"

"Since when did you care about politics?" Annabeth asked.

"Since some guy in Iraq threw his shoes at Bush, if what Thalia says is true."

"Oh, yeah, that," Annabeth laughed. "Yeah, so he's out now. We have Barack Obama now. First black president."

"Cool. See, I missed all that." Luke glanced down at Annabeth, and she could tell he was analyzing her. Years of knowing each other had allowed him to decode her expressions the way she could with him.

"You didn't come here because you missed me – " he started to say.

"No, I did!" Annabeth interrupted.

"Fine, maybe you did, but something else is bothering you, too." Annabeth looked away. "Yeah. Thought so."

"It's nothing."

"Can we cut the chase and just get on with it? It'll happen anyway."

Annabeth didn't really want to talk about anything that was bothering her, but the words came spilling out anyway.

"They expected me to know what's wrong with Jason," she sighed. "And I have no idea! I know about architecture, and Ancient Greece, and quantum mechanics, but I can't figure this out. But it can't be that complicated, and I should be able to get it. I'm a daughter of Athena, I should have already –"

"Annabeth, you expect way too much of yourself."

"No, I'll figure it out. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll know."

"Annabeth."

"And then Jason will be okay, and we can fix him," Annabeth choked out. She could feel the tension in her chest. Why was this so hard? Why couldn't she figure it out?

"You don't need to be perfect all the time. Just because they think you can do something, it doesn't mean you can," Luke said softly. He squeezed her hand.

"But I can do this."

"Maybe you can. But not right now. You can't do everything."

Luke always seemed to know what was going on in Annabeth's head better than she did. This was no exception. Leading the visit to Camp Jupiter, following the Mark of Athena, Jason's sickness, being a survivor of the Titan war, finding Percy, helping run camp, doing well in school, rebuilding Olympus, staying in touch with friends… All the pressures of her life building up on top of her, crushing her under the weight. Annabeth could feel herself shaking, as she tried to accept what Luke said as the truth. She couldn't do everything. She needed to relax, right?

Easier said than done.

It's one thing to tell someone to stop expecting so much from themselves. But being that person, and lowering your standards? That's a totally different story.

Luke's expression was full of concern, and Annabeth knew she'd never be able to convince him that she had accepted what he had tried to tell her every time she was too hard on herself. Lying was out of the question, he would never fall for it. She took a different tactic. Change the subject.

"Yeah, guess so," she said, trying to sound as calm as possible. There was no way Luke was buying it, but she could at least distract him, and at the same time get an answer to her own burning question. "Luke… why did you do any of that stuff?"

Luke's expression immediately hardened. It was a familiar mask, the one he wore when he didn't want to talk about something. They hadn't had much time to chat in the underworld, so the topic hadn't come up yet. Luke took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair, making it even messier than before. It was longer than it used to be, brushing his eyes.

"They deserved it," he said flatly.

"You think so?"

"Definitely. They don't care about us. They never did, and they still don't. We're just running around, doing all the hard work for them. We're fighting Gaea while they're sitting up in Olympus, pretending there isn't a problem."

"And the Titans would have been better?" Annabeth asked skeptically. Luke sighed.

"I don't know. Maybe. But it was change. It was different. At least the gods would be gone then. I'm sick of them just controlling our lives, picking out what they want us to do. They're a bunch of spoiled little kids. And if they don't get their way, shit gets real."

"You're still mad at Hermes." It wasn't a question. She knew how much Luke hated him. There was no point in pretending that he had ever loved his father, even if that's what they had told Hermes. And after a lifetime of neglect, why should he?

"And Hades. And Apollo. And Zeus. And Hera. And every single one of them. They ruined my life. Everything they did made it worse," Luke said. "They don't even keep their own oaths. Leo said there's a Poseidon girl at camp now, and another Zeus boy. And there's a set of unclaimed twins, but everyone's pretty sure they're Hades'."

"I know. I don't like them either," Annabeth muttered. "But they're all we have."

"But I'm not starting another war. I'll leave that up to the next generation of revolutionaries."

"Good. Then you won't die again."

"Looks like you can't get rid of me. Fight my way through the states with a golf club, survive a dragon to the face, kill myself in a war, and I'm still alive," Luke laughed, although it wasn't a particularly happy laugh. He fiddled with the hem of his shirt, looking away from her. "Still. You and Thalia weren't down there. It got pretty lame."

"But you didn't want to leave at first."

"It draws you in," Luke said. "I mean, I didn't like it, and I didn't want to be there, but it felt wrong to leave, you know?"

"No," Annabeth answered honestly. "I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could."

"Huh. Maybe you only feel it if you're supposed to be there? It's almost like it tries to drag you back in."

Annabeth didn't respond. It was getting late (just past two, the clock showed), but Annabeth wasn't about to go back to bed. She'd never be able to get the images out of her head. Talking to Luke had distracted her, but the violent, twisted images were still lurking, just out of sight.

She leaned against Luke, her head on his shoulder, and decided to close her eyes for just a minute. Then she'd go to bed…

"Hey, don't fall asleep on me," Luke said. "There's no way the coach is going to take this nearly as well as Chiron did when you were eight and we had sleepovers. For one thing, you're not eight anymore."

Annabeth groaned.

"Yeah, I guess." She stood up off the bed and stretched, arching her back. Time to go back to the nightmares. Stopping at the door, she turned around.

"Luke…" she said, terrified of what she'd be returning to. "I can't stop thinking about it, Tartarus. How do I stop?"

After his quest, Luke hadn't slept for days. He and Lindsey got nightmares for weeks, maybe months after that. Over the course of his life, he'd watched his best friends die, and seen gods come crashing down and rising up. If anyone could tell her how to get rid of the images, it was Luke.

He looked at her, his eyes dead, vacant. Not even pretending to be happy anymore.

"You don't," he said.


	6. Chapter 6

_Oh hi there. Well I may have forgotten to update last time I was in town, but whatever. Here's the next chapter, marking the more-than-halfway point. It'll all be up before The House of Hades comes out. Hope you enjoy it at least a little._

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Chapter 6

No one looked good at breakfast. Annabeth was sure they'd all been kept up like her, miserable from the lack of progress with Jason's case. Luke and Percy looked worse than the others, and Annabeth was sure she looked the same. There were heavy bags under Luke's eyes and he slouched in his chair. Percy was resting his head on his arms, eyes half open.

"Alright, cupcakes!" Hedge shouted as he walked into the room. "I've got terrible news for everyone."

Piper squeaked as everyone else looked at the coach in horror. Gaea had risen? Jason was dead? The gods were at war? The Romans had burned down Camp Half-Blood? Dozens of disasters flooded into Annabeth's head ranging from somewhat inconvenient to apocalyptic.

Hedge seemed unfazed by the looks of terror being exchanged.

"First of all, Gaea's stopped," he bleated angrily at them. The demigods looked around in confusion. "She's stopped rumbling, stopped speaking, and stopped moving. That lazy little – "

"Isn't that a good thing?" Hazel asked. Many other nodded in agreement.

"Well I guess, but how boring is that? No big battles, no fights, I didn't even get to show the old hag what happens when you mess with this satyr!" Hedge flexed his muscles. Thalia looked at him skeptically, but she was the only one who did. Everyone else was used to this by now."

"Also, usually when the enemy stops attacking for no reason, it's because they're planning," Percy threw in. He muttered something that sounded suspiciously like _and sitting around on cruise ships,_ but no one but Annabeth seemed to notice.

"Or because you kicked their butt in Tartarus!" Leo cried, pumping his fist.

"I hate to break it to you, Leo," Luke said, "but we did a lot more running than fighting down there. We were literally surrounded by Gaea. Fighting wouldn't have been a very good idea."

"So this means that we have to start working to get ahead of Gaea," Annabeth said.

"Whoa there, missy! Did I say I was done with the bad new?" the coach growled at her. Annabeth wasn't sure if she should have rolled her eyes or blanched in terror. Was it really bad news, or was it just another non-fight?

"The Romans arrived at Camp Half-Blood – " Annabeth held her breath " – and they all got caught in this big trap. So instead of a huge battle between two ancient civilizations, there was a fight with the twelve Romans who avoided the trap, and then a big diplomatic discussion. And now they've decided not to kill each other."

"Er – right," Thalia said, "Terrible news, that."

"Awful," the coach agreed, missing her sarcasm.

"What was the trap, anyway?" Percy asked.

"Big hole in the ground – or something like that. Like a right hook. Simple, but effective," the coach said proudly.

"Well, that's one thing we can stop worrying about," Annabeth sighed. "Now we just have to make sure Gaea isn't recruiting a million warriors."

"She'll have monsters, not warriors," Luke corrected. Frank looked at him curiously. "No demigods are going to fight alongside her."

"Why not? In the second Titan War, lots of demigods fought to bring down Olympus. You did. So why wouldn't they do it again?" Frank asked, all his usual politeness forgotten. Annabeth was sure he was reassessing how useful Luke would be. Knowing your enemy was always a good plan.

"Last time we would have gotten something out of it. Well, we were supposed to. The gods were the ones who had neglected us, and Kronos had offered to build a better world where we wouldn't be ignored. I don't see Gaea making any claims like that," Luke said.

Lots of nervous looks were passed around the table. No one seemed to like hearing Luke talk so casually about Kronos, regardless of how useful it was to understanding Gaea. Thalia was the only one who didn't seem uncomfortable with this. She stared determinedly at Luke, as if trying to work out exactly what had gone on in his head while fighting in the war.

After breakfast Annabeth followed Luke and Thalia onto the open deck. The three of them, alone. Annabeth sat between the two demigods. She wished she could say that it felt like she was seven and they were still running, but it only half did. There was more tension now, more unsaid feelings, and somehow, even more trouble. They weren't in immediate danger, but it seemed to loom on the horizon. A very familiar horizon, actually. The Argo II was still drifting around the same valley in the Swiss Alps. For the first time since boarding the ship, there was no certain destination that they had to reach as soon as possible, and it was momentarily calming. Still, it was a very tense moment of relaxation.

"You know what's crazy?" Luke said. He didn't wait for the girls to respond before continuing. "In Japan, you can buy underwear from a vending machine."

"Seriously?" Thalia asked, leaning forward to look around Annabeth.

"Yep."

"No," Annabeth said. "They had that for a little while, but then it stopped because it was really unhygienic."

"And once again Annabeth has ruined a perfectly good idea with logic," Luke sighed, shaking his head. "Such a tragedy."

"Right," she said. "Because your ideas are always fantastic."

"Oh, of course. My ideas are superb."

"Like that time you thought we could light a dumpster on fire to drive away that minotaur?" Thalia said.

"Hey, it worked."

"Yeah, and attracted about five hundred police, and a bunch of fire demons." Thalia rolled her eyes.

"And did the minotaur stick around? No. I accomplished my mission."

"You tried to convince the police that you were eighteen and I was your little sister," Thalia pointed out.

"He could have passed for eighteen," Annabeth reasoned.

"Annabeth, you were seven. To you, anyone could have passed for eighteen."

"Well at least I actually reached that age," Luke said. "And I don't have to remain below the drinking and voting age forever, unlike _some people_."

"Like you care if something's illegal," Thalia snorted.

"You can't criticize, you've been driving forever," Annabeth said.

"More beauty, ruined by logic," Thalia sighed dramatically.

"Whoa, no tag-teaming. That is not fair."

"You know what's not fair?" Luke said.  
"Your face," Annabeth said.

"Your life," Thalia suggested.

"Your brain."

"Your nose."

"I was _going_ to say that you guys are stuck with your faces instead of mine – and that Snape killed Dumbledore. But those are all pretty valid, too," Luke said. That was one of the things Annabeth liked about Luke. Hit a touchy subject and he wouldn't sidestep it: he'd face it full on and brush it off.

"Gods, why are you two so obsessed with those books?" Thalia cried, throwing her hands up.

"Maybe because they're the most beautiful pieces of paper on the planet," Annabeth said.

"Once you get into Harry Potter, you never come out again. You get absorbed into the world," Luke added.

"That sounds really dark. Like it's a cult or something," Thalia said.

"'The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death,'" Annabeth quoted, proud of her Potter knowledge. She and Luke had spent a long time absorbing the books and movies. It had started out as a distraction from the fact that their friend had been turned into a tree, but eventually grew to a passion totally unrelated to Thalia's death.

"Dude. You even have a motto," Thalia said, shaking her head. "Are you all going to commit mass suicide when the last movie comes out?"

"We're not a cult –"

"Is there going to be Kool-Aid laced with cyanide? Do you guys have your own country? Is it called Rowlingsville?"

The conversation was light, so far from the previous time spent with Luke and Thalia. Annabeth had missed this more than anything, getting to relax with these two, no immediate threat. They were so familiar, it was okay to do pretty much anything, demonstrated nicely as Luke tried to flip a slice of cheese off his forehead and into his mouth, and Thalia did an impressively accurate (or so Annabeth assumed) impression of a velociraptor.

It was only after lunch had come and passed that Annabeth split off from her old friends and let them do their own thing. She had remembered with a jolt of guilt that Jason was still sick, and she still had to figure out how to help him.

What the hell was even wrong with him anyway?

Annabeth opened the door quietly and peeked into the semi-dark room. Piper sat next to Jason's bed, stroking his hair. The laptop lay open on the bedside table, playing a P!nk song quietly. Annabeth recognized the song all too quickly; Luke was a huge fan of P!nk.

She was going to shut the door and come back later, but Piper, having heard the door open, turned around and motioned for Annabeth to come inside. She did, and stood awkwardly a few feet from the bed. Since the vote the previous day Annabeth had started to feel a little uncomfortable around Piper, Frank, and Nico. She was beginning to forgive Frank as he started to accept Luke, but Piper still didn't like him. Annabeth had no intention of asking her why. That was one conversation she'd be glad to miss out on. As for Nico, Annabeth understood that he was still angry about Bianca's death, and rightfully so. He had merely shifted the blame from Percy to Luke. That didn't make her feel any more comfortable around him, though.

"How's he doing?" Annabeth whispered. Jason lay asleep in the bed, shivering under the piles of blankets on top of him.

"Bad." Piper's voice broke. "Leo's been here most of the morning. He brought me lunch, and we tried to get Jason to eat some, but he didn't want it. He hasn't eaten anything for two days, just half a piece of toast. And he says he's freezing, but he doesn't have a fever, and he's having trouble breathing. He's coughing, tired, dizzy, sore – "

"Listen, Piper," Annabeth said before the girl could work herself into hysterics. "Don't worry. We'll figure out what's wrong with him."

"Okay," Piper said in a small voice. Annabeth could see her beginning to crack. It wasn't easy losing someone this close to you. She knew from experience. Maybe that was why Piper didn't want Luke on the ship. She thought he was going to replace Jason in everyone's minds.

"You should go outside," Annabeth insisted. Piper shook her head. "It's nice out, and you need to calm down anyway."

Piper looked extremely tense for a minute – as if leaving Jason's side would cause him to drop dead – but eventually her shoulders sagged and she nodded.

"There's a playlist of his favourite music," Piper said, pointing towards the laptop. "Just play any of it. In case he wakes up."

Annabeth sat down in Piper's chair and began to sift through the music. There was a lot of Oasis, Grateful Dead, and Pink Floyd, mixed with some Beatles, Nirvana, Nena, and even a little Spice Girls. Three P!nk albums, Rusted Root, and that song that they all sang at camp, _Shark in the Water_… he even had_ I'm Blue_.

"I've never seen anyone like such much of the same music as Luke," Annabeth laughed. "TV shows, movies, music. It's too bad they haven't really been able to talk, they'd get along so well."

"I guess. But seriously, his music is so weird. I mean, _I'm Blue_? Oasis? Who even listens to that anymore?"

"Jason and Luke, apparently."

"Guess so." Piper lingered near the door.

"Go," Annabeth insisted. "Just go and try to relax for a bit, okay? I know how hard this is, but you'll go crazy if you just spend the whole time worrying."

Piper nodded slowly. She took one last look at Jason before leaving, but the creases on her forehead hadn't disappeared. As soon as she was gone, Annabeth leaned over Jason, resting her head on his chest. His breath rattled, and she could barely feel his chest rising with each shallow intake of air. She could hear him drawing in each breath, but it seemed to be taking huge amounts of energy. He didn't have any infection, she'd determined that much. His body just wasn't working at full force. Mono? Probably not, it was rare for demigods.

Annabeth spent another half hour next to Jason, desperately grabbing at ideas, each more unlikely than the last. Maybe it was just mono. What exactly was mono anyway? All she knew was that it made you really tired the whole time.

Drastic situations called for drastic measures. It was time to set aside her pride for a moment (not without difficulty) and ask for some help.

The safest place, she decided, was the stables. The pegasi were never down there, and neither was anyone else. Annabeth filled a cup with water, grabbed a gold drachma, and headed towards the unused room. Once she had shut the door and made sure no one was coming, Annabeth stood off to the side (in case someone looked in) and filled her mouth with water. She spat it out into the light that streamed through one of the small windows, creating her own personal rainbow. Quickly, she threw the drachma into the rainbow.

"O Iris, goddess of the rainbow, please accept my offering," Annabeth recited, hoping it would work. "Show me Will Solace. Please."

It shouldn't have been so difficult to accept that she needed his input. There should be nothing shameful about asking a child of Apollo for help in a medical emergency. Still, Annabeth half hoped that he would be asleep. It was still pretty early at Camp Half-Blood.

But, true to the stereotypical child of Apollo, Will was wide awake, lying in his bed, headphones on. His eyes widened when Annabeth's grim face came into view, and he quickly yanked his blanket up to cover his bare torso. Pausing the music, he took off his headphones.

"Annabeth?" he asked in disbelief. "For gods' sake, it's like, seven in the morning. Most people aren't even up yet."

"So whisper," Annabeth said. "Besides, you're up, and you're the one I want to talk to."

"Oh yeah?" Will raised his eyebrows. "Pick you up at eight?"

"Not like that, idiot." Will grinned at her. Typical. "I mean, we have a serious medical crisis, and no healers on board."

"You have Hedge."

"He has no idea what to do."

"I told you that you needed an Apollo kid with you," Will sighed.

"Yes," Annabeth said grudgingly. "Yeah, you did. But whatever. Something's wrong with Jason. Are you even listening to me?" Will was looking at his ipod. He dropped it and looked back at Annabeth.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm listening. What's wrong with him?"

"We don't know."

"So figure it out." Will began to reach for his ipod again. Annabeth took a deep breath. _Just for once_, she told herself, _throw all that pride in the corner and tell it to shut up._

"I can't," she said. "I can't figure out what's wrong."

Will stopped, his hand an inch away from the ipod.

"You can't figure out what's wrong?" he asked, bewildered.

"Don't rub it in."

"No, it's fine. I just… wow." Will blinked. "Never thought this day would come."

"Great, happy times. But we seriously need to know if Jason's sick."

"Right." Will sat up in his bed, leaning against the wall, blankets still covering everything up to his chest. Annabeth could see the ceiling near his head. Poor guy always had the top bunk. "Chiron mentioned this. He said you guys called a couple of days ago."

"Yeah, but I was asleep, and apparently they didn't talk to you. Anyway, so Jason's really pale, and he's having trouble breathing. He's retching, but nothing's coming up, and coughing – "

"Dry cough?" Will asked. "No phlegm or blood?" Annabeth shook her head.

"Dry," she said. "And he said his head hurts, he's really weak, and he's cold but his temperature's normal. He's not sweating or anything. He hasn't been hungry in days, and doesn't even want to drink much, and he says he's really nauseous. Any ideas?"

Will tapped his fingers on his knee, looking away, his eyebrows pulled in close together.

"Could be some kind of weird flu, although those usually don't last for more than a couple of days," he suggested. "I take it you've given him nectar and ambrosia?"

Annabeth nodded.

"Didn't help," she said.

"Huh. Weird. And the coach tried his healing?"

"Yeah. Any other ideas? You think it could be mono?"

"Nah. That's a virus, you get a really high fever. Nectar would actually help that. I'd need more information to really figure it out."

"You want to see him up close?" That could be arranged. In the middle of the night. With no one else around.

"It would help. It would be even better if I could actually be there, but that's not really an option."  
"I'll call back this evening. I mean, this evening for you," Annabeth clarified. "What should we do in the mean time?"

"Pray to Apollo?" Will said.

"Right," Annabeth said glumly. "Like they listen."

Will shrugged.

"You never know." Gods damn optimists. "Also, I heard Luke Castellan's back. Legit?"

"Oh. That. Look, can we catch up on all this later? I'm supposed to be watching Jason right now in case he – in case he needs anything."

"Right," Will said. "And I should probably get dressed. Usually I prefer having conversations with more shirt involved."

"Really? I thought your whole cabin had something against shirts." The Apollo kids never passed up an opportunity to a) get more sun on their bodies and b) show off their _glorious beauty, _and it usually involved less clothing than they were supposed to be wearing.

Will rolled his eyes.

"Please," he said. "You know I need all the sunlight I can get. It's not easy having to visit your family in Alaska in the winter, you know. Or do you just enjoy stereotyping my entire cabin?"

"Whatever. Just try and figure something out with Jason, okay?"

"Yeah sure. I'll see you later."

He waved his hand through the image while putting his headphones back on, and the Iris message disappeared. That went better than she expected. Will hadn't been nearly as snarky about her needing help as some people would have been. Clarisse, Drew, Connor and Travis, to name a few.

Annabeth opened the door slowly to make sure no one was coming. She didn't really have a valid excuse to be walking down here, although she probably could just say that she'd needed a place to think. In any case, it would be easier if she just didn't run into anyone.

Her luck didn't last long, though. Soon, she heard people coming down the corridor, talking in hushed voices. Either there was a secret going around, or they were talking about Jason. Time to put her years sneaking around to the test. Annabeth reached for the nearest door – a broom cupboard – and hid inside, among the cleaning products. The lemony smell of the chemicals was overbearing, but she managed. She pressed her ear against the door and listened. They had stopped near her hiding spot. To her surprise, it was Percy and Nico. Probably talking about Luke, in that case. Neither one liked him, but they probably wouldn't want to say this right to his face.

Apparently, though, she was wrong.

"Okay, is here far enough?" Percy asked. He sounded impatient, but curious.

"I guess," Nico replied.

"So what's this big thing that you don't want anyone else to know?"

"It's about Jason… I – I don't think he's going to be okay."

"You think he's going to die?" Percy said, probably louder than he'd intended. Annabeth was equally as shocked, but remembered that Nico could tell when people were dying.

"No. He's not dying."

"So he's fine," Percy said. "He's alive. He'll continue to exist. Gods, Nico, why would you word it like that?"

"I never said he was dying."

"So you just think he's going to be sick forever then."

"No…" Annabeth could hear Nico moving around. He sounded nervous, uncomfortable.

"Then what?"

"Well, he's not dead," Nico said carefully. "But he's not alive, either."

Neither of the boys said anything for a minute. Annabeth considered this. Like a monster? Not truly alive, but never able to fully die? Surely not, this was Jason, Thalia's little brother.

"What do you mean? How can he not be alive or dead?" Percy finally asked.

"I can feel energy from people who are alive and healthy, and I can feel this different kind of stuff coming off dying or dead people, like some kind of residue. But Jason doesn't have either. He's just there, but it doesn't feel like he's there. I can't get any sort of reading off him," Nico explained.

"That doesn't make sense."

"I know," Nico said. "Why do you think I haven't told anyone? I haven't been able to get anything from him since you guys came back from Tartarus."

"So he's just…"

"Not there." Nico finished Percy's sentence. "It's like he doesn't exist."

Eavesdropping on your boyfriend was probably number one on the list of How to be a Bad Girlfriend, but Annabeth didn't care. Nico and Percy were right. That didn't make any sense.

"So… what does that mean?" Percy said.

"It means that I don't think he's going to get better. He can't. He's not even hovering between life and death, he's just not there. This is wrong. It shouldn't happen," Nico hissed. He was definitely annoyed by this lack of understanding, and Annabeth sympathized. It didn't make sense. How could Jason not be dead or alive?

As soon as the boys left, still both bewildered by the situation, Annabeth burst out of the cupboard, desperate for clean air. By the time she reached Jason's room again, her mind was coming up with hundreds of possibilities, each more preposterous than the last. Nico's findings may not have made sense, but they might still help her somehow.


	7. Chapter 7

_Hey people. So this is my last irregular update, probably, since I'm coming back into town permanently in a little over a week. Which is too bad, because it's been a really great summer. Anyway, here's the chapter._

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Chapter 7

In the late afternoon Leo arrived to take over at the end of Annabeth's shift of Jason-watching. She was still working on her ideas, and had scribbled several down in a notebook, but, as she'd come to expect, nothing made sense. Leo asked about it, but she told him it was diagrams of temples in Olympus. He'd only get his hopes up if he thought that sixteen pages of notes and a very confused Nico might actually mean something.

"Piper was going to come down again," Leo said. "Percy and Frank had to hold her back."

"Good. She needs to calm down." Leo looked guiltily at the ground as Annabeth picked up a few loose sheets she'd been working with and shoved them into the spiral-bound notebook. Maybe he hadn't been very good at making Piper feel better.

"Did – Do you know what's wrong with him?" Leo asked. Annabeth could hear the pain in his voice.

"No," she said. It wasn't entirely a lie. "Sorry. I'm working on it."

Leo glanced down at her notebook suspiciously, as if it was responsible for Jason's illness.

"Yeah, well, take your time," he sighed, sitting down in the chair. "But not too long. You know what, fuck that. Hurry up, okay? Don't take your time."

Annabeth looked at him, eyebrows raised. She gave him her most disapproving look.

"Sorry," he muttered. "Just figure something out. Please."

Annabeth nodded. Leo really hadn't been himself since Jason had gotten sick. Stress, probably. She was about to leave when Leo called her back.

"And tell Luke that _Twilight Princess _definitely takes place after _Majora's mask_," he said.

"Zelda games?" Annabeth asked. "Really?"

Leo nodded, his eyes wide. His_ I mean business_ look.

"Since when did you two become friends?" Annabeth said. Leo shrugged.

"In the past couple of days. He's pretty cool."

"Right. I'll pass on the message." Annabeth shut the door behind her, dropped off her notebook, and proceeded to the upper deck, presumably where most people would be. She was right.

Piper was staring out aimlessly at the sky, Frank sitting next to her. Hazel, Luke, and Percy were suited up in their armor, swords out. Annabeth couldn't relate to their desire to train. Hadn't the Underworld been good enough for them? She couldn't believe that they wanted to keep fighting. Nico stood off to the side, sword drawn, but not participating. She could see the betrayal and hurt in his eyes whenever his gaze shifted to Hazel. They hadn't exactly been friendly at lunch. In fact, Piper, Nico, and Frank all seemed to be getting the cold shoulder from several other members of the crew. Certainly the group had disagreed on things before, but this was a whole other level of disagreement. And a division in the team was the last thing they needed.

Annabeth took a seat next to Thalia, who was sitting on the raised part of the main deck.

"So?" Thalia looked at Annabeth expectantly. Annabeth sighed. Thalia was now putting the pressure on, too.

"I don't know. He's not really much worse. But he's no better than before," Annabeth said. Thalia didn't look satisfied, but she didn't say anything about it.

"Piper'd better shut up about the whole thing," Thalia said. "Honestly, you'd think they were married or something. They've only been together for a few months."

"Yeah, I've been meaning to ask you about that. Since when did you hate Piper? Last I heard from her, you two got along great," Annabeth asked.

"Yeah, we did. And then I realized what a brat she is. She was complaining about how her dad never paid attention to her, 'cause he was always too busy working on his movies. I mean, gods, at least he doesn't drink much. At least they got along, and he cared about her."

It was one of those few times that Thalia talked about her mom. Annabeth could relate to what Thalia was saying. After all, she gotten mad the day before at all the other prophecy kids. They whined about how hard they had it, yet they had never had to fight to stay alive on a daily basis. Hazel, Annabeth could sympathize with a little bit, and maybe Leo. But even Jason had explained his toils dramatically, as if living at Camp Jupiter his whole life had been such a hardship.

"She's really not that bad," Annabeth said, as she listed the reasons she had recently developed to dislike Piper. Not voting for Luke, her desire to be so different from the other Aphrodite girls. They weren't so terrible. Not all of them.

_Still,_ she told herself, _Piper's usually pretty nice._

Thalia looked at Annabeth skeptically, blatant disbelief across her face. Thalia, unlike Luke, had never been one to hide behind a cool, collected mask.

Annabeth shrugged. Thalia still didn't look convinced.

"She's allowed to be upset. Jason is her boyfriend," Annabeth reasoned.

"Yeah, and _my_ brother. I'd lost him for years, and now she's acting like she's got some kind of claim over him," Thalia snorted. Annabeth let it go. It wasn't worth arguing over. She watched Luke and Hazel fight and felt a twinge of old jealousy when Luke patted her on the shoulder.

"I can't get used to having him back," Thalia said. At first, Annabeth thought she was talking about Jason. But from her expression and the direction of her gaze, Annabeth was sure she was thinking about the more recent return of a long lost friend.

"Yeah. I know."

"I spent so long telling myself that he was just an idiot, and that he had been acting the whole time I knew him, and trying to convince myself to just forget about it… and he's still the same as ever." Thalia frowned.

"It's…" Annabeth hesitated. "It's like when you were a tree. And we put so much effort into convincing ourselves that you were never coming back." Thalia nodded.

"I missed him."

"Me too."

"More than I'm probably supposed to," Thalia said. "You know, being a hunter and all."

"So… wait. You and him…?"

"Dude! No!" Thalia cried. "No, I just mean that he's like a _brother_, and we're not supposed to like guys at all."

"Oh, thank gods," Annabeth sighed. "I thought I was going to have to be a bridesmaid or something."

"Always planning ahead, as usual."

"Always. What kind of flowers do you want?"

"Hilarious." Thalia rolled her eyes. "Didn't you and him already get married though? Or is Luke actually lying about absolutely everything now?"

"When I was eleven, on Halloween. And, he still only lies about really important stuff and really trivial stuff," Annabeth explained.

"I noticed. Before you arrived Leo asked him if he'd had a car when he was alive. He said he did, so Leo asked if it was a Ferrari, and Luke said yes to that, too."

"He just agrees with people when they ask things about him. I think he picked it up from this other guy in his cabin, Jack. In his last couple years at camp he convinced half the people there that he was married and had two kids," Annabeth said, laughing at the memory.

"What a loser." Thalia rolled her eyes again.

"Him and Leo seem to be getting along pretty well, though."

"Mm. Yeah. They wouldn't shut up about Zelda games."

"It's good at least someone actually likes him. He's got a terrible reputation now, even though I tried explaining what actually happened to everyone," Annabeth sighed.

Thalia didn't say anything. After a few minutes she nodded her head towards the deck below them, where Luke was showing Hazel some sort of trick with her sword.

"Sometimes you can tell exactly what he's thinking," Thalia said quietly, "And then sometimes you have no idea."

"Yeah. I know."

"You'd think after knowing him for as long as I have I should be able to tell all the time. But I can't." Thalia looked somewhere between worried and angry.

"You don't think he's okay, do you?" Annabeth asked, leaning her head on Thalia.

"He's never okay." The silence between the girls was longer and tenser than the last one.

"So," Thalia said, breaking out of her daze and bringing Annabeth with her. "How're the plans for Olympus coming?"

"Amazing," Annabeth said enthusiastically. "Okay, there's this temple for Artemis, that's classic Greek style, but it's got these five towers on it, and the whole middle section is made of arches, so it looks sick. And then for Athena, there's this big building, almost like a Victorian town house, and there's crown molding on all the inside wall, and these awesome window wells with bars. And I designed this kind of Indian Taj Mahal-esque tomb with – "

"Sounds, uh, fascinating," Thalia said. She was obviously regretting bringing up Annabeth's work, but there was no turning back now. And Annabeth didn't care. Thalia was just going to have to listen.

"Yeah, it's really cool," Annabeth continued, unfazed. "So the tomb is for Eos's son, because, you know, all the minor gods need temples, and she wanted one for her son who died in the Trojan War. Apollo insisted on having a whole bunch of statues, so his temple's actually a little smaller, but it's in the style of Greenwich Village, like south Manhattan, since that's where Café Wha? is, and then – "

"So I found this new band called Bomb the Music Industry!" Thalia interrupted Annabeth again, smiling brightly. Well. A cheerful smile from Thalia. Annabeth felt privileged.

"Are they any good?" Annabeth asked.

"They're _amazing!_" Thalia gushed.

"Yeah," Annabeth said. "I gathered that. But are they any good?"

"Well, they're kind of a harsh ska-punk sound. But really, really fast, and their lyrics are awesome."

"So they aren't good."

"Not by _your_ standards," Thalia said. "But I swear, they were sent from heaven for me."

Thalia continued to describe her latest musical soul mate for several minutes, reciting quite a few of their songs. Annabeth was impressed at her memorization. Half of the lyrics didn't rhyme, and the lyrics were really long. Once she was done, Annabeth tried to once again explain why Thalia was wrong, and why the Gorillaz were the best, but Thalia was having none of it. She was going steady with this band, and no one was going to break them up.

Dinnertime arrived. The coach took over for Leo, deciding to try more of his healing. Annabeth doubted it would work, not if her theories made any sense, which it didn't. She was trying to work out if it was possible that the boy they were looking after was not in fact Jason, but something that had come out of the Underworld, which is why it wasn't dead or alive. But surely Nico and Hazel would have noticed that? Or perhaps her other theory was more logical. Part of him had been pulled into the Underworld, an exchange for their escape. That one didn't make much sense either, so she kept the ideas to herself.

Dinner ended up being more entertaining that Annabeth had hoped. She sat next to Percy the whole time, eating her hamburger while watching Thalia, Luke, and Leo argue playfully over music. Leo was defending Beyoncé, while Thalia was going on about Nirvana, and Luke disagreed with both of them. He didn't seem to have a stand. He was just arguing for the sake of arguing.

"Come on Thalia! She defends all the single ladies," Leo cried. "Shouldn't you be supporting that, being a hunter and all?"

"Not if it's a bad song," Thalia said. "Does she even have a last name?"

"No one Knowles," Luke said loudly, causing Thalia to reach over and smack his head. Annabeth choked on her burger while laughing. Soon after dinner, jobs were assigned. Every few evenings, if there was no immediate threat, they would set to work in pairs, making sure the ship was clean and functioning. It had been Piper's idea, and it had worked well. They'd had to readjust the schedule to accommodate the arrival of Thalia, Luke, and Nico, which left Annabeth on bathroom cleaning duty with Luke. Percy was not impressed with how the schedule had worked out, and Annabeth couldn't blame him. She certainly had spent a lot of time with Luke in the past couple of days, and the boys' relationship hadn't improved much. But nothing could be done, so Annabeth set off with Luke to visit every single gods damn bathroom around the Argo II.

"This is the absolute worst job," Annabeth grumbled. She was leaning into the bathtub, butt in the air, scrubbing grime off the side. Luke was wiping the counter around the sink with a sponge full of bleach.

"Bet you wouldn't mind if it was with the porpoise."

Annabeth tried to turn around to glare at him and got her long hair stuck in the cleaning product on the side of the tub.

"Are you _ever_ going to stop making fun of me and Percy?" Annabeth asked, trying her best to remove her hair with minimal residue.

"Probably not." Luke grinned over his shoulder at her. "Consider it payback."

"What, for photo-bombing every single picture of you and… what was it, Alex?"

"Alice Lechateau. And yes. Payback for that, and the number of times you pretended to puke whenever we were together."

"I was nine! That kind of thing is perfectly okay when you're nine, not when you're twenty-three," Annabeth said.

"Nine, twenty-three. What's the difference?" Luke shrugged.

"Apparently none for you."

"Clearly. Which means that I have every right to make fun of you. How many kids are you two going to have?"

Annabeth aimed the showerhead at him, and he flinched instinctively, although the water wasn't on.

"You watch it, or else you will get soaked," she threatened.

"Do you guys watch Titanic together, and then cry when Jack dies? Do you blame Poseidon for sinking it?"

"I hate Titanic."

Luke raised an eyebrow skeptically.

"Really?" he asked. "Do you really, _actually_ hate it?"

"Fine, Leonardo Dicraprio is decent looking," Annabeth admitted. "But I've never cried."

"Alice almost killed me when I started calling him Dicraprio."

"Wasn't that why you guys broke up?"

"Probably."

"Solid relationship."

"Obviously. Have you picked out your wedding dress? Used the L word?"

"I take it you don't mean lesbian." Annabeth went back to cleaning the tub.

"Or _lesbians_. Don't sidestep the question."

"You honestly want to know? Yes, but only in the context of getting attacked by crazy-ass Romans and the sudden arrival of back up."

"Such a disappointment. True love held back. At least I only say I love people when I mean it."

Annabeth coughed and rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, or if you're dying," she said.

"Excuse me? Was I tripping when I was dying? Who did I confess my undying love to?" he asked. Annabeth stopped scrubbing and turned to look at him in disbelief, but Luke looked back at her with honest confusion.

"Well there's really no nice way of putting this, but uh, me," she pointed out.

"I… oh, right. I remember that. I asked you if you loved me."

"Same thing."

"That… that would really explain why Percy seems to be actually jealous of me instead of just annoyed," Luke said, realization dawning on his face. "No, but you know what I meant by that, right?"

"The best I could figure was that you wanted to know if I was still as infatuated with you as when I was twelve. You didn't stick around to explain it," Annabeth guessed.

"That too, I guess, but it wasn't really the main point. I mean, at that time I figured that pretty much everyone hated me. Thalia hated me, the whole camp hated me, I hated me. I was kind of trying to ask if you didn't hate me. If at least you didn't hate me as much as everyone else."

Annabeth didn't say anything for a minute. The only noise came from their sponges on the ceramic tiles, but Annabeth could tell how much Luke was anticipating her answer.

"It really didn't sound like that," she finally said.

"Yeah, I know. Funny how things come out wrong when you're dying, eh?" He went back to scrubbing. Annabeth was relieved that he didn't press the fact that she'd had a crush on him when she was twelve, or that she had actually believed that he was in love with her. She was perfectly happy having him as a friend.

"You know what was driving me crazy last night?" Luke asked, breaking the silence that had grown over the past few minutes.

"Other than my interrupting your sleeping patterns?"

"Nah, I'm used to that. And it's not like I really slept much anyway." Annabeth could see the bags under his eyes, and she was sure her face looked no better. "Leo doesn't even have I'm Blue on his ipod," Luke finished. "He knows it – it was on the radio forever – but he doesn't have it."

"Not many people do, Luke," Annabeth sighed. "Be glad that Jason's still a fan."

"Jason likes I'm Blue?" Luke visibly perked up.

"Jason likes everything you like, apparently."

"This guy just keeps getting better and better."

"And all his clothes fit you!" Annabeth exclaimed. "You two might have to get married!"

"Then we can bow down to our lord and master, Rose Tyler, greatest Doctor Who character ever, and listen to all the P!nk we want…" Luke smiled dreamily, staring off into space, lost in his fantasy of having a friend who actually agreed with him on anything.

"Yeah, great. You missed a spot on the sink." She pointed at it, and Luke rubbed at the spot with his sponge, still daydreaming. As soon as it was clean, Annabeth quickly rinsed all the surfaces and the two moved onto the next gods forsaken bathroom. Upon finishing the terrible duty, Luke went off to find Thalia, and Annabeth decided it was as good a time as any check up with Will. She showed him Jason's current condition (Jason was glad for the VIP visitor), but it turned out to be a waste of a drachma. Will had no more ideas than before, but promised to keep working on it.

Finally, it was Percy time again. Being alone on garbage duty, he had finished his chores much faster than Annabeth had, and found him sitting in his room. She could still hear Hazel, Piper, and Frank vacuuming and sweeping the hallways and rooms.

Percy was sitting crossed legged on his bed, his back against the headboard, fiddling with a Rubix cube, a look of intense concentration on his face. Annabeth sat down in front of him and looked at the cube.

"You have to get the whites into a cross shape," she advised, remembering some of the Rubix cube-solving instructions she had once read.

"Yeah," Percy muttered, not taking his eyes off the cube. He spun some of the sides around, not really getting anywhere with it. After a little while he gave up and dropped it off the bed, into a pile of dirty clothes.

"I can't believe Leo actually thinks that we did anything more than annoy Gaea when we were in – in Hades," he said, rolling his eyes. His voice had cracked when he almost said 'Tartarus.' It didn't look like he'd gotten anymore sleep than Annabeth or Luke.

"I know. I still can't figure out why she's suddenly stopped attacking us."

"Yeah…" Percy frowned. "Couldn't have anything to do with the fact that we're a few hundred feet above the ground, could it?"

"Highly unlikely."

"Highly? Meaning 80% or more?" Percy raised his eyebrows, expecting praise.

"Well haven't you memorized your math textbook. Too bad you're going to have to retake grade ten."

"Oh. Yeah, I guess I missed most of that didn't I?" Percy groaned. "Seriously though? I have to do a whole extra year of high school because Hera couldn't just introduce the Romans and Greeks and tell everyone to play nice?"

"You honestly think we'd all get along if there wasn't some kind of friendly hostage situation going on?" Annabeth asked.

"Guess not."

"I don't get why they don't start talking to us again. I mean, it's pretty obvious that Gaea's up to something, so they might as well help out."

"Wait, you didn't hear?" Percy asked.

"Hear what?"

"Hold on." Percy held his hands up in a 'stop everything' motion. "Let me enjoy this for a second. I'm going to tell you something that you don't already know."

"Great, you had your second. Now what's the big deal?"

"Okay, so Travis and Connor got really pissed off, because the gods even stopped claiming people, and their cabin was literally overflowing. They had people sleeping on the porch. So they decided to end this once and for all by stealing the van and driving down to New York. They arrived at Olypmus, planning on yelling at the gods to claim their damned kids, and found that it was deserted."

"When was this? We've only been away for a few weeks," Annabeth said.

"Last week. That's what Leo said. He'd been talking to Nyssa."

"Weird."

"Yeah."

"We could ask the coach if he's heard of anything like this happening before," Annabeth suggested, and Percy nodded in agreement. "Or maybe Luke, he's usually pretty good at figuring out what immortals are up to."

"Right, because Luke _always_ has _all_ the answers," Percy huffed.

"What?" Annabeth said, caught off guard by the sudden negativity.

"Well _you_ seem to think he's perfect, anyway," Percy muttered.

"He's my friend, Percy. He's like my older brother," Annabeth explained for the thousandth time her in life.

"He betrayed the entire camp, and tried to kill us! Because of him, Michael, Silena, Beckendorf, Lee… they're all dead! And you're _still_ defending him. I don't even care what he thinks about the gods. What he's done to me and you, and everyone else should be enough of a reason to not go visit him in the middle of the night, and spend every second with him!"

"He saved the whole world," Annabeth reminded him coldly, but a chill ran through her as she remembered Silena's melted armor. "He showed you how to sword fight, he helped you when you first got to camp, he saved us a hundred time in the Underworld! It's not like he's an asshole."

"Hate to break it to you," Percy shouted. "But he kind of is. He makes fun of everyone and just acts like he's the greatest person ever."

"He acts like he's the greatest person ever? He hates himself!" Annabeth yelled back. "He's really good at pretending not to, but that doesn't stop his life from sucking."

"Great, so he's an amazing liar, too! Super trustworthy. Is there anything he can't do?"

"I don't know, bake a pie? He's my friend, Percy. Why can't you just put up with him?"

"I do, actually. I put up with him a hell of a lot, all through the Underworld, and now on the ship, just because you want him around."

"You could try to like him, you know. You could _try_ to get along with him," Annabeth said through her teeth, trying to calm down. It wasn't easy.

"Right, that'll help a lot, considering how much he wants me out of the picture. Why does he hate me so much? I never even did anything to him! Not personal, anyway. And it's pretty hard to be friends with someone who hates you so much."

"Look, I know he's not perfect, but Luke always has a reason for everything he does. He doesn't just hate people for the sake of hating people," Annabeth said. _Close your eyes and count to ten_, she thought. She could rationalize this whole situation. Work it out without anymore screaming.

"So why does he hate me then? What have I ever done to him? Wasn't he always the one making my life miserable?" Percy asked.

Annabeth knew why. She'd known for a long time, having figured it out when she was thirteen, and confirming it when they'd been in Tartarus.

"You haven't done anything to him," she said, finally able to speak more calmly. "It has nothing to do with anything you've done. But he would have hated you whether or not there had been a war."

"What, for trying to hang around with him because he was the only person I knew at camp, besides you and Grover?"

"No, I already said you've done _nothing wrong_. But the thing is that his mom could see through the mist, that's why she tried to become the Oracle. And – and, well, so can your mom. If Luke's mom hadn't gone for the Oracle and the curse wasn't discovered, your mom would have been next in line for the job. A mortal who could see through the mist, and had connections to the gods." Annabeth sighed and looked away from Percy. "You could have ended up with the life that he had. You've seen May. She's crazy. And like I said, Luke's not perfect. He would do anything to have not had to have his mom like that, even if it meant forcing someone else to live it. He's jealous of you."

"He's jealous of _me_?" Percy said incredulously. All the anger seemed to have been sapped out of him, too. Annabeth nodded.

"Sally's always helped you. Poseidon was actually there sometimes," she said.

"Barely."

"More than Hermes was. But you didn't need help, your mom actually looked after you. Luke had to take care of himself his whole life."

"He's jealous of me," Percy repeated. Annabeth sighed.

"_Yes_," she said. "You have a godly parent who cares about you, a family that's pretty stable, you succeeded on all your quests… Look, from the second the gods actually noticed Luke existed, he was one of their favourites. He was brave, he could fight, he had a… well, a life that they liked to see as a kind of reality show."

"That's messed up."

"Yeah, but that's what they do to kids they like. He was supposed to be so special at everything, but then everything went wrong and people just started pitying him. You have pretty much everything he ever wanted," Annabeth said.

"Wow." Percy looked down at his feet, curling and uncurling his toes. "But he's so… untouchable. It's like nothing you say affects him."

"Like I said, he's a good actor."

"Oscar-worthy," Percy muttered. "Fooled me with that whole 'I'm your friend' act."

Annabeth glared at him. Percy shrugged.

"What? I thought he hated sympathy. Just 'cause I understand why he doesn't like me, doesn't me I have to like him now."

"I guess."

"It's still weird though. I always thought I was the underling or something."

"Au contraire," Annabeth said. "Weren't you the one who got offered a place as a god?"

"Apparently. They must have been on crack, trying to make _me_ a god." Percy shook his head in disbelief.

"You could be the god of seaweed," Annabeth laughed. "No, no, better! God of misusing words!"

"So I got _trivial_ and _tribunal_ mixed up once. Big deal." Percy rolled his eyes.

"Almost cost you your life, if I remember correctly. That teacher didn't look to happy," Annabeth said, remembering Percy's attempted excuse for being late to school. "How about _hummus_ and _hubris_?"

"I was thirteen," he protested. "I'm allowed to make mistakes."

"Sure," she said, snuggling up against him. He wrapped his arm around her. Neither moved much until the coach stormed through the hall, yelling at everyone to go to bed. Annabeth left Percy's room, but only reluctantly. She was not looking forward to another night of haunted dreams and restless sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

_Look who's back in town for good now! Actually, I'm pretty sad. The camp I worked at all summer was a lot of fun, and now I'll have to go back to school and do some advanced functions. Boo. Anyway, we're nearing the end now. Sort of. 2/3 of the way through. Or a little more. Anyway, updates will be more consistent now. _

* * *

Chapter 8

Percy was different the next morning. He and Luke were once again no better rested than Annabeth, who'd only scavenged a few hours of sleep, but his whole manner had shifted a bit. When Luke made a snarky comment about Percy's sword fighting style (frankly, Annabeth was surprised he had the energy to make any kind of witty insult this morning) Percy didn't react much. He just glanced briefly and Luke, then looked away, obviously figuring out what Annabeth had meant the night before. Thankfully, nobody at the table asked about the screaming match between her and Percy.

Luke noticed, and he wasn't happy with Percy's sudden reluctance to take the bait. He looked suspiciously at Annabeth, who shrugged and tried to look as innocent as possible.

The coach, as usual, was assigned Jason duty during the meals. It kept him from trying to beat anyone up in a gathering, and provided a little entertainment for Jason. Annabeth hadn't stopped thinking about the son of Jupiter since Will had taken a look at him. How often was it that a child of Apollo couldn't tell you what someone was sick with?

Hazel and Nico sat as far apart as the table would let them. Every now and then, one of them would look up and give the other a disdainful look. Annabeth wondered is they'd had a fight.

Wondered?

No, she was positive. Of course they had, it was obvious. Others had been involved, too, from the looks of it. Nico's glares were also directed at Leo, and Thalia, while Piper was receiving shifty looks from Hazel, and Leo was glancing nervously at Piper. Frank kept looking around, his whole body tensed, like he was expecting one of them to explode, and Thalia was too into her conversation with Luke to really care about what else was going on. Annabeth wondered if maybe the reason no one had asked her if she'd had a fight with Percy was because no one had heard it. There must have been another fight at the same time, she realized.

Percy, on the other hand, made no such conclusions, only that everyone else was not in a good mood. He wasn't stupid, Annabeth knew. He was well aware that he was walking on eggshells. That didn't make him any more tactful.

"Geez," he said, taking a bite of his toast. "Who died?"

"Who _died?_" Nico growled. "Not Jason, like I told you. Although Luke _should_ be– "

Luke looked up at the sound of his name, but Leo spoke before he could.

"Wait, Jason's okay? And you didn't tell us?" he said.

"No, he's not _okay_," Nico said, emphasizing the last word.

"But you know what's wrong with him?" Frank asked.

"Hold on, someone figured out what's wrong with Jason?" Thalia said, catching up with the conversation.

"No," Nico repeated. "I still don't know what's wrong with him."

"But you have an idea?" Piper guessed.

"No!" Nico nearly shouted. "No, I have no idea what's wrong with him. But you know what's _not right_ about him? He's not alive, and he's not dead."

"That doesn't even make sense," Thalia said.

"I _know_," Nico said, clenching his teeth in frustration. "It doesn't make sense. But I have no idea what's wrong with him. All I know is that I can't get a reading on him. It's like he's just not there."

"So we're back at square one," Piper moaned. "Great. For a second there it actually sounded like we were getting somewhere."

"Piper, I hate to break it to you, but I don't think we ever left square one," Percy said. Annabeth nodded in agreement.

"All we know," she said. "is that he's not sick. I don't know if this is some kind of doppelganger – _no, that wasn't an actual idea_,_ don't take it seriously guys_! Anyway, it's not any normal kind of illness."

She left out the fact that it was driving her insane, not knowing what was wrong with Jason. It couldn't be that complicated, she should have gotten it by now.

"Your detective skills amaze me," Percy said.

"But how can he not be alive or dead?" Hazel persisted.

"_I don't know._ Why don't you take a look?" Nico said, but Hazel shook her head.

"I noticed it too, but I wasn't sure. I'm not good with that stuff. That's your thing."

"So is Jason just going to be permanently stuck in a state of non-being or something?" Thalia asked.

"Maybe, maybe not," Nico said.

"Can you tell anything for sure?"

"Fat lot of good you've been." Piper rolled her eyes. "You keep acting like it's everyone else's job to figure out what's wrong with him. All you ever do is hang around having eye-sex with Luke."

Luke stifled a laugh, and, lucky for him, Thalia didn't notice.

"Sorry I'm not a doctor, but you just sit there whining, and in case you didn't notice, I haven't actually gotten to talk to Luke for _nine years_. There _is_ a difference between eye-contact and eye-sex," she cried.

"And you haven't seen Jason in like, twelve years. Don't you think you should care a little more about him?"

"At least I don't have to sit around all day bawling me eyes out to actually care about a guy," Thalia said.

"Yeah, but you could at least act a little more worried about Jason," Frank added. "He's your brother, and my friend, and he might be dying."

Thalia threw her hands up in the hair.

"I know that! You think I'm not worried about him? I just don't yell it out all the time."

"Besides," Luke said. "If he does die, we can always just drag him back to life, can't we? Isn't that what we do here?"

Fair point. Thalia, Luke, and Hazel all should have been dead. There did seem to be a lot of necromancy going around in the group. Raise that number to people who _should_ have been long dead for various reasons, and you could add Nico, Percy, and herself to the group.

"Do you even care about Jason?" Percy asked Luke, snapping Annabeth back to reality.

"Of course I do. He's Thalia's brother, why would I not care?"

"Oh, I don't know," Piper said sarcastically. "Maybe because all _you_ do is run around with a sword, trying to look impressive, making jokes, and complaining about the gods. You don't even know him!"

"Piper," Annabeth said. "Calm down. Yeah, Luke doesn't know him, but he doesn't have any more of an idea of what's going on than anyone else does. He does care, he just doesn't have a solution."

"Funny," Nico said coldly. "But Jason only got sick once Luke showed up. He was perfectly fine until you guys came out of the Underworld."

"What, so now this is all my fault?" Luke glared at Nico.

"Well, maybe for one person to come back to life like that, another person has to lose their life," Leo said. Annabeth frowned. According to Nico, Jason wasn't exactly losing his life.

"That's not how it worked with Hazel," Frank muttered, and Hazel nodded in agreement. The comment fell on deaf ears, however, because Piper chose that moment to start screaming.

"So if _he_ never came back, Jason would be fine?" she shrieked.

"Uh, no," Luke said. "Did you hear what Frank – " Piper whipped around to face Luke.

"Will you shut up for once?" she yelled. "It's like ever since you've arrived, all anyone cares about is what you're doing! You – " she pointed an accusing finger at Leo. "Even you've been paying more attention to him that Jason! He's sick guys, he might die, and all you care about is that Luke can show you how to do some stupid trick with a sword. I swear to the gods, you guys don't even care what's happening to Jason, you just think that it will work out in the end." Piper sounded close to tears. "Do you guys care that he might be dead in a few hours? Do you?"

"Piper, you're not the only one who cares about Jason," Hazel said. "He's my friend too."

"Yeah, right, you care about him _so_ much!" Piper cried. "You were too busy learning how to fight with Luke to visit him yesterday. Fuck all of you!"

Piper scraped back her chair and stormed out of the room. Annabeth wasn't sure if she should feel bad about what was happening, or mad at Piper for freaking out. In the end, she decided on feeling guilty for not having deduced what was wrong with Jason.

The whole table was silent for a minute. Everyone just sat around, giving each other guilty looks. Finally, Thalia spoke.

"Bitch. 'You don't care about Jason!'" she mimicked. Oh, sweet baby Zeus, Thalia, was now really the time?

"As much as I hate to say it, you have been spending more time with Luke than Jason, so you're kind of the bitch right now," Leo said, his voice shaking. He had his arms crossed tightly over his chest, and his eyes flitted around the room. "That's my best friend. Basically one of my only friends, and he might not be for much longer. You could at least show that you care a little more."

Leo stood up from his seat. No one said anything. Annabeth could seem him shaking in… fury? Fear?

"Since it doesn't seem to make a difference to you guys if he's okay, I'm going to check on him." He turned and left the room the same way Piper had. Annabeth felt the amount of guilt in the room increase by six hundred percent. Still, it wasn't like Leo hadn't been having fun yesterday. On the other hand, it was true that he didn't have a ton of friends. He was pretty close with Jason. To make the situation even more worrying, Leo usually covered any little crack up with humour, making his outburst a rare occasion.

In the end, Annabeth's sympathy won out. Despite the number of time she felt like telling everyone else to suck it up, at least they weren't on the streets, she understood what Leo and Piper were going through. When Luke had betrayed the camp, she'd tried so hard to believe that he was going to come back. He never did, of course, until now. The prolonged suffering and uncertainty, that was what really got you. And having to consider that your boyfriend might be dead? Annabeth was a master.

"I think this is a new record," Luke finally said after several minutes of silence. "It's not even ten o'clock yet and everyone's miserable."

"Can you just not talk for a while?" Frank demanded. Luke shrugged, but obliged.

The group finished their breakfast in silence, the only noise coming from plates being scraped. Most people seemed to have lost their appetite. Even Percy left half of the waffle he had been eating, a highly unusual occurrence. After clearing the dishes just as quietly as they had finished eating, the group dispersed in pairs. Luke and Thalia headed for the stairs that led to the very top deck. Hazel and Frank walked off in a different direction, while Percy and Nico sat in the window bench. Percy glanced over at Annabeth, but she shook her head, and he nodded – right now she wanted to be alone. She set off for her bedroom, ready to work.

Rebuilding Olympus would be put on hold for now. The gods weren't talking at all, and there were more pressing matters at hand, mainly Gaea's sudden retreat, and Jason's ever-mysterious illness. Annabeth grabbed her notebook off the floor and a pen from her bedside table. She flipped through the theories about Jason (there was no way a doppelganger from the Underworld had replaced him, and he definitely did not have AIDS, nor was this male PMS) to a new page. She wrote "Possible Causes for Gaea's Disappearance" and underlined it, then sat on her bed and leaned back against the wall.

After nearly half and hour Annabeth was still coming up dry with ideas. In an attempt to inspire herself, she put on a Demon Days, the absolute best Gorillaz album (in her opinion, anyway). It didn't help much. Rather than thinking of Gaea, her thoughts drifted to possessed drummers, floating islands and the rest of the twisted story that went along with the band. Reluctant to turn off her favourite band that she got to listen to so rarely, (there wasn't much time for music in Tartarus) Annabeth listened to the entire album. Finally, after the album ended, she was able to come up with a few ideas of why Gaea had stopped her attack.

She had given up. (Highly unlikely)

She was trying to regain control over the Doors of Death. (Possible, but unlikely)

She was too bewildered to the sudden complete disappearance of the gods to continue. (Very unlikely)

She was waiting (After 4.6 billion years, you got pretty patient) and was building up her forces as Kronos had. (Possible)

None of them were brilliant, and Annabeth wasn't planning on putting too much faith in any of them.

Perfect. Another thing for Annabeth to feel useless over. Another problem she couldn't solve. Still, this one had just arrived, and it wasn't quite as urgent as Jason's deteriorating condition. She flipped back through her notes to once again look over the theories about Jason she had slaved away at. Depleting immune systems, cursed lifespans due to broken vows… none of them could be proven. Annabeth felt downright useless.

Even worse than her lack of good ideas was the way the prophecy was turning out. So far they had nine demigods who had assembled, with one sick and apparently not alive, and half of them wouldn't even talk to each other after what had happened at breakfast. Annabeth recited the prophecy in her head again.

_Seven half-bloods shall answer the call._

_To storm or fire, the world must fall._

_An oath to keep with a final breath,_

_And foes bear arms to the Doors of Death_

Well, there was no shortage of half-bloods, that was for sure. They had demigods to spare, although Annabeth sincerely hoped they wouldn't need any replacements. Originally she had been sure it was Jason, Percy, Piper, Leo, Frank, Hazel, and herself. Now it wasn't looking quite so set in stone. Annabeth found that annoying above all else. Couldn't the prophecy have just said nine? Did they always have to be so mysterious?

Gaea had had control over the Doors of Death, so the last line was easy enough to understand. As for the _oath to keep with a final breath_, Annabeth had been theorizing that maybe, just maybe, it had been referring to her and Percy's promise to stay together as they fell into the Underworld. Although, that hadn't exactly been anyone's final breath, so it could still mean something else. Preferably no one Annabeth knew personally.

The line that had really bothered her though, was the second one. _To storm or fire the world would fall_. Storm could have meant either Percy or Jason, and now, form the looks of it, Thalia. This was why Annabeth had been so reluctant to trust Jason at first, aside from his never-wavering nobility. Surely someone couldn't be perfect all the time. The fire part of the line was easier to figure out: Leo. He was really the only thing that had both a connection to both the prophecy and fire, so Annabeth had been keeping an eye on him. He didn't seem like the type to suddenly betray his friends and try to destroy the world. Then again, neither had Luke.

Annabeth didn't like the uncertainty of that line. There were options. The world, as in the planet itself, or the population? There were choices to be made, and she didn't like how up in the air it all was. Percy wasn't always too fond of the gods. Leo was kind of lonely. Thalia had suffered too many losses. Jason always acted without flaw. Certainly none of them were completely miserable, but they weren't happy either. There was room for deterioration, especially – Annabeth felt her heart jump – in Leo's current state of mind. He was upset. He was really upset, and therefore really vulnerable.

Someone knocked at the door and Annabeth was shaken from her thoughts.

"Yeah?" she called. Leo opened the door hesitantly, peeking in.

"Uh, can I come in?" he asked nervously.

"Yeah. Go ahead," Annabeth said with a smile that she hoped said _I was definitely not just considering that you might betray us all or something._

Leo opened the door fully and stepped inside. He stood awkwardly across the room from Annabeth. Taking a deep breath, he looked at Annabeth, then quickly at the ground.

"I just wanted to say sorry," he said. "I mean, you've been doing everything you can to figure this thing out. It's only your third day back from Tartarus really, and you've spent half the time trying to diagnose Jason. Even now." He gestured to the notebook Annabeth was still holding.

"It's okay," Annabeth muttered, now feeling guilty for thinking he would have betrayed them. But it was still a possibility, right? "I know what it's like to lose a friend."

"Whoa, Jason's not gone," Leo said. "He's okay, right?"

"For now."

"I guess Thalia and Luke kinda had a habit of dying."

"Or betraying people, or leaving, or joining the hunters," Annabeth said. "But, you know. Same thing in the end. I haven't really seen them much in the past few years. Even Percy has a thing for disappearing with no explanation."

Leo sat down at Annabeth's desk and didn't say anything. He glanced over at her building plans, then looked all around the room, everywhere but at her. Finally, he made eye contact.

"It's just… Can't we do anything for him?" Leo pleaded as he unscrewed and dissected one of Annabeth's pens. She shook her head.

"Not until we know what's wrong with him. I even tried talking to Will. He has no clue what's going on."

"I never really had a best friend until I met Jason," Leo said quietly, resting his chin on the back of the desk chair. "'Cause I was always moving around. I don't want him to – yeah, even if he's not technically alive, or whatever."

"I know. I didn't have anyone except Luke and Thalia for a while," Annabeth said. "But he might still be okay, and you'll still have Piper no matter what happens. You two will stick together."

"Hopefully. She really hates Luke."

"So I've noticed. And you don't seem to hate him."

"No. He's cool. Plus, Thalia actually talks to me when I'm with him."

"He also doesn't mind hanging out with people who are way younger than him," Annabeth added.

"Yeah. And you know how you six were always making out or something?"

Annabeth nodded. She had felt a little bad about how everyone had their go-to partner, except for Leo. "Even if it's him and Thalia, I don't feel left out, or like I'm third wheeling."

"It's his inner camp counsellor," Annabeth said. "His whole 'make sure everyone's included' attitude. He used to hang out with all his friends who were actually his age, but he always brought me along too. He's kind of cool that way."

"And he actually listens to you when you talk, and doesn't just blow everything off. And people don't usually take me seriously, so…" Leo trailed off. "Then again, that's probably just a 'listen to a kid whine about his problems' counsellor thing, right?"

"Mm. Maybe not," Annabeth said.

"I hate to sound like a bad romance movie, but it's like we already know each other. Like, we've only known each other for a few days, but we just get along really well, like we've known each other for a while. I met him less than a week ago, but he feels like an old friend. You know?"

"Yeah," Annabeth lied. Usually Luke was a little more distant with people at first, and had a little more of a shield up around him. He wore a mask until he got to know someone really well. Apparently not with Leo, though. She'd heard Luke mention how awesome he thought Leo was.

"You know where he is right now?" Leo asked.

"There's a ninety-five percent chance it's wherever Thalia is."

"How about an exact location?"

"No idea," Annabeth said. "But shouldn't you go comfort Piper or check up on Jason, or something?" Leo shifted uncomfortably.

"Just did. But I kinda wanted to talk to Luke. Like I said, it's like we're already really good friends," Leo said. "I'll see you later."

He stood up, placed the pen he had spent the past several minutes disassembling on Annabeth's desk, and left the room.

"Yeah," Annabeth muttered, staring vaguely at the door Leo had just exited through. "Like you already know him…"

There were several types of learning. There was classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning. Then there was insight, the moment when all the pieces fell into place and order was made out of chaos. Insight was sudden. It was unexpected. It had just happened to Annabeth.

Her theory was ridiculous. It was off the wall, illogical, and absolutely insane. But it was the best plan she had, and a weird plan was better than no plan at all. And crazy as it was, it had more evidence than any other theory.

She thought of Jason's scar on his lip, his coincidental musical choices, and strange little flashes of humour. She thought of his preference for Rose Tyler, his blond hair, blue eyes, and his pyjamas. She thought of how Thalia preferred to deal with loss.

Yes, Annabeth was finally getting somewhere.

She hoped she was wrong.


	9. Chapter 9

_Yeah. So. Stuff's happening. 75% through. That's big. Yep. School's back (boo), and so are regular updates (yay!). Okay, I'll just put the rest of this Author's Note at the end._

* * *

Chapter 9

It took forty-five minutes for Annabeth to scribble down her theory in the notebook, effectively covering eleven pages. She hated herself for coming up with it, but the theory made sense. She would never forgive herself if it succeeded. She would never be able to look Piper in the eye again, or Leo, or Hazel, or Frank, or anyone for that matter.

That said, it wasn't for sure yet. She still needed a final bit of data to prove it.

The whole thing depended on a lot of factors. It depended on Thalia's mindset, Luke, and Hera. If one person went against her theory, the whole thing would be burned to the ground. She kind of hoped someone would prove it wrong. Ignorance and feeling stupid, as much as she hated them, would have been nice for a change.

Annabeth listed off some of her proof again. The scar, the eyes, the hair, the music, the movies, the TV shows, the relationships with Thalia and Leo. All the similarities. And then the differences. She had a theory for that, too, but it really depended on how Thalia responded to the whole thing.

First though, she needed lunch. Maybe the world would look different on a full stomach.

Percy, Hazel, and Frank were also eating. Percy had somehow managed to created a triple layer sandwich filled with everything imaginable. It had pickles, mustard, salami, ham, mayonnaise, cheese, bacon, tomatoes, avocado, relish, scrambled eggs, and countless other things Annabeth did not care to learn about. He'd even managed to make the bread blue, although she wasn't sure how. Hazel looked absolutely disgusted by the abomination (Annabeth couldn't blame her), and was leaning as far away from it as possible. However, this was no time to discuss Percy's strange eating habits. Annabeth threw together a peanut butter and banana jam sandwich, grabbed a half-empty carton of milk, and swallowed everything in under two minutes.

"In a hurry?" Percy asked, his mouth bulging with the Mother of All Gross Sandwiches. To think she kissed that guy. Annabeth nodded, still chewing the last of her sandwich. She chugged the rest of the milk, and stopped for a minute, out of breath.

"Have you seen Luke?" she gasped.

"I think he's up on the top deck," Frank said. Annabeth ran off with her notebook, calling a _thank you_ behind her. She passed Leo on the stairs.

"Luke up there?" she asked, not breaking her jog.

"Yeah. You coming for lunch?" he said.

"Already done. When's Jason's birthday?" She stopped and spun around to look at him. Leo looked taken aback by her intensity.

"July 1st, I think."

"Right. Okay." She took off again, leaving Leo behind her. Luke was lying down on the top deck, hands behind his head, staring up at the sky. He was wearing a red striped shirt that Annabeth recognized as Jason's. Gods, how could she have not noticed this before?

Luke lifted himself up onto his elbows and grinned at her.

"Hey munchkin," he said. Any other time, Annabeth would have told him to cut it out. But not today.

"You're six foot one, right?" she asked, sitting down crossed-legged in front of him with her notebook open and pen ready.

"Last I checked, yeah. Why?"

"How much do you weigh?" she said, scribbling down the number.

"One eighty something, I don't know. Why so personal all of a sudden?" Luke asked, completely confused. Annabeth paused.

"I have an idea," she said hesitantly. "It's about Jason. And it involves you."

"Which means it isn't good, is it?" Annabeth shook her head.

"We need Thalia, too."

"I think she's on Jason duty right now," Luke said.

Even better.

"Great. You need to come with me."

"Hold on. What's this theory anyway?" he asked.

"I'll explain it when we get there. It'll sound crazy right now." Annabeth closed the notebook and stood up, offering Luke her hand. He grabbed it and pulled himself to his feet, trying to read her expression.

"And what exactly is so bad about it?" he said.

"You'll see. But it's bad news for Jason, okay?" she responded. Luke sighed dramatically, but followed her as she walked back down the stairs. As they passed through the kitchen again, Luke grabbed an apple. Piper had joined everyone in having lunch, and was sitting next to Frank, looking glumly at her smoothie. Leo tried to talk to Annabeth, but she ignored him and kept going.

Thalia was sitting next to Jason's bed, where Jason was lying, propped up on a bunch of pillows. They were watching an old episode of _Friends_. _The One with the Thumb_, if Annabeth could remember correctly. Old School. Both looked up from the laptop when Luke and Annabeth entered. Jason's state was still deteriorating. His hair looked bleached, his skin blotchy, and his eyes heavy. Each breath seemed to take a huge amount of effort, and they were shallow and shaky.

A worn copy of _Animal Farm_ sat next to Jason's bed. Annabeth remembered when Luke had read it. Being under a hundred pages, he had actually succeeded in finishing the whole thing, and loved it. Underneath _Animal Farm_ was _The Chamber of Secrets_, another one of the few books that Luke had read.

Annabeth could see all the parallels now, with Luke and Jason in the same room. Every little detail. They even both had that weird freckle-tan thing going on.

"Can we talk to you for a second?" Annabeth asked Thalia.

"Yeah, sure." Thalia turned around in her chair to fully face them.

"Like, outside," Annabeth said.

"Oh. Yeah." Thalia turned to look back at Jason. "I'll be back in a minute, okay?"

"Okay," Jason whispered weakly. Thalia followed Annabeth and Luke into the hallway, shutting the door behind her.

"He's not looking too good," Luke said, taking a bite out of his apple.

"Your perception never fails to amaze me," Thalia said dryly. "So what's up?"

Annabeth took a deep breath. Now was the time. She had it figured out. And she had two fairly impatient demigods waiting for an answer. Luke looked at her expectantly, still munching.

"I think I know what's wrong with Jason," she said, looking at her feet.

"Actually?" Thalia gasped. "For sure this time?"

"I think so."

"Awesome! How do we help him?" Thalia cried. Annabeth didn't answer right away. She leaned back against the wall and slid down to the floor. Thalia's smile faded. She and Luke followed suit, sitting on the opposite side of the hall as Annabeth.

"Fuck. There's something we can do, right?" Thalia asked.

"Just listen to my explanation first, okay?" Annabeth said. "Then we can decide on whether or not we can do something." Thalia nodded. Luke's face remained blank and expressionless, but she knew that his mind was racing.

"Okay. So this is going to sound crazy, but that's why you guys have to listen until I'm done. Got it?" Luke and Thalia nodded again slowly. "Jason isn't real."

"What do you – "

"Thalia, I said don't interrupt me. I have to tell you more for it to make sense. So, Jason isn't real. He never was a real person. I bet if you look up Jason Grace, there are no birth certificates, no records, no information."

"So how does he exist?" Luke asked.

"I was getting to that." They were really bad at the whole 'no interruptions' thing, and it was starting to annoy Annabeth. "He doesn't exist. At least, not for much longer, because Jason is kind of Luke. Another version of him."

Annabeth waited for it to sink in.

"Are you shooting up?" Luke said.

"Think about it. You and Jason like the same music. Piper said his favourite song is I'm Blue. He really likes P!nk, and Oasis. He watches all the same movies as you, and TV shows. I bet he likes the same video games. Jason had blond hair, blue eyes, and even has a scar on his face. He's six foot one, probably weighs a hundred and eighty-something pounds, and was born on July 1. And I swear, his eyes are the exact same as yours. He's a good fighter, and prefers a sword, even though he can fight with other things too."

"Okay," Thalia said. "Weird, but not grounds for claiming he's a clone of Luke."

"He's not a clone," Annabeth explained patiently. "He's a recreation. He's your brother, and aren't you and Luke pretty close? Leo said that it felt like he already knew Luke, even though he'd only met him a couple of days ago. Jason's not dead, but he's not alive, and it's because he's not real. And… sorry Thalia, but it all kind of comes down to you."

"Me?" Thalia leaned back. "What did I do? How did I make Jason sick?"

Annabeth shook her head. This was where the theory got messy and uncertain. It completely depended on Thalia.

"I told you, he's not sick. Basically, you created him. You never told me or Luke about Jason, right? That's 'cause he didn't exist until a few months ago. You weren't happy after Luke died at the end of the war, right?"

"No, I was _thrilled_ that he was dead forever and I'd lost my best friend. Yes, you could say I was a little sad."

"Can't say I was too pleased either." Luke said. "What does this have to do with anything?"

"Thalia, you like to just ignore bad stuff when it happens, right? Deal with it later?" Annabeth said. Thalia shrugged. "So after the war I guess you tried to forget about Luke. But you must have really missed him because, let's face it, none of us really have a ton of friends, and you were stuck with a bunch of girls who'd be really unsympathetic to the death of a guy friend. So as a, uh, coping mechanism, you kind of created this other version of Luke. One that looks the same, and likes the same things, but doesn't insist on raging against the machine. One who can actually listen and take orders, and do the right thing, instead of trying too hard to be independent, and powerful. You created a whole other person to replace Luke. I always thought Jason seemed kind of blank sometimes. I guess it's because he wasn't finished yet.

"He was just an idea, and you couldn't actually make him real. But Hera could, and I'm pretty sure she did. She also needed a replacement to use in her Greek-Roman exchange thing."

"So why not use whoever it was who really destroyed the Titan thing at Mount Tam?" Luke asked. Annabeth shrugged.

"I don't know. Maybe it was Octavian – he's a psycho – or maybe whoever it was died. Maybe she just really likes families enough to try to give one to Thalia. But I've never seen a photo of Jason that was taken before the war. That time that Hera stuck him on the bus with Leo and Piper – that wasn't just his first time with them, that was his first time _existing_. She put fake memories of him in everyone's head. And he was going strong, kept alive by Thalia believing in him."

"But he was fine when we first got out of Tartarus," Luke said. "He was ready to kill me, but then he decided not to because he knew that me and Thalia were friends."

"Yeah," Annabeth said. "He only got sick once you and Thalia started trying to kill each other. He was fine until Thalia saw you again, and realized that you were alive." She looked at Thalia apologetically. "Then you didn't need him as a replacement anymore, so he started fading. Nectar and ambrosia won't keep him alive. There's nothing to keep alive. He's just an idea that's disappearing fast."

"But I can just pretend he's real, right?" Thalia asked. "I can keep him here. I made him up, and I can keep him here."

"I don't think so. We've been losing him since you and Luke met up, and now that you know what's going on, the illusion's gone. He'll probably disappear completely in a day, or even less now."

"I don't believe this," Thalia muttered. "It doesn't even make sense."

"Let's ask Jason then," Annabeth said. She stood up numbly. What was wrong with her? Why couldn't she have just left the whole thing alone? Yet here she was, telling them her theory the way she'd tell Percy about sine and cosine laws. Thalia slowly pushed herself to her feet, using the wall for support. Luke got up, too, looking away from the two girls.

Jason looked up from his laptop when they came in. He really did look exhausted – worse than he had ten minutes ago. His skin looked paper thin and frail, and his scar was more prominent than ever.

"Hey Jason," Annabeth said softly, crouching next to his bed. "Can we talk to you for a bit?"

"I'm tired," he whined. "Can't I just sleep now?"

"Sure, you can relax when we talk to you. Yeah, get comfy. Just make sure you answer, okay? It's really important."

"Fine," he wheezed, settling into the pillows and blankets. Annabeth started her questioning period.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Jason Grace," he responded, looking a little bewildered. Annabeth nodded.

"Just relax, okay? Where are you from?"

"Los Angeles."

"How old are you?"

"Sixteen."

"When were you born?"

"1996."

"What's your favourite TV show?"

"Doctor Who."

"Favourite episode?"

"Doomsday."

"If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be?"

"France. Paris."

"What's your favourite band?"

"Oasis."

"Favourite song by them?"

"Digsy's Diner."

"Why?"

"It just seems really British."

"Okay, but what about your favourite song ever?"

"I'm Blue."

"How'd you get that scar on your face?"

"Ate a stapler."

"What's your favourite movie?"

"Amélie."

"Favourite books?"

"Harry Potter and Animal Farm."

"Who's your favourite Harry Potter character?"

"Harry."

Jason yawned. His eyes were beginning to close.

"Come on, Jason, it's a just a bit longer. What's your favourite weapon to use?"

"Sword."

"What's your favourite food at McDonald's?"

"Fries."

"Do you have a girlfriend?"

"No."

Annabeth glanced back at Luke and Thalia, both standing a bit behind her. Luke raised his eyebrows.

"Why do you want to go to Paris?" she asked.

"The gods aren't there," Jason muttered.

"Who's your best friend?"

"Leo?" It sounded like a question.

"What's your favourite time period?"

"Twenties."

"How old are you?"

"Forget," Jason mumbled. His eyes were almost completely shut.

"When were you born?"

"1989." Annabeth could hear Thalia whispering something to Luke. She was almost done now.

"How old were you when you left home?"

"Nine."

"What weapon do you use if you have no sword? A spear?"

"No. Golf club."

"Where are you from?"

"Connecticut."

"What's your name?"

Jason mumbled something incoherent. It did not sound anything like "Jason Grace."

"What are your parents' names?"

"May and…Hermes."

"How'd you get that scar?" Annabeth whispered.

"Dragon. On a quest."

"Okay, Jason. Just go to sleep now," Annabeth said quietly. His breathing steadied, but remained shallow, and his eyes stayed shut. Annabeth stood up and turned to face Luke and Thalia. Both were pale as ghosts. Thalia's mouth hung open, horrified and miserable, while Luke just looked shocked. Shocked and guilty.

"Like I said," Annabeth said. "He's a parallel of you." She walked out of the room as fast as she could, not wanting to stay any longer. Luke followed her out, but Thalia didn't move. She sat down on Jason's bed and brushed through his hair with her fingers.

Luke leaned against the wall in the hallway, squeezing his eyes shut. He rubbed them with his fists, then ran a hand through his hair. Conflicted emotions ran across his face. Sadness, guilt, anger, worry, terror. Annabeth waited.

"I didn't know she was that upset," he finally choked out. "I thought she was fine with everything. I mean, she kicked me off of Mount Tam."

"She's never been a really emotional person though. I always thought that no matter what happens she's tough and doesn't let it get to her. I guess not." Annabeth shivered. She had dreaded this. This was one of the few times that she regretted being right.

"Everything he said… that's exactly how I would have answered," Luke muttered.

"I know," Annabeth said. "That was pretty much the whole point. Gods, now we have to actually tell everyone. Piper's going to die."

"Yeah. Learning that her beloved boyfriend was actually some weird version of me… but he wasn't_ exactly _like me. They talked about him. Leo said that he always followed orders, did whatever people told him to. He was obedient and always honest. And he was kind of submissive, but I'm really not. So how does that work?" he wondered.

"You go out of your way to disobey people. But I think Thalia ended up replacing some traits that got you in trouble with ones that would have saved your life. I think. I'm not completely sure," Annabeth explained.

"Guess this is the end of people even trusting me even a little," Luke said miserably. "Sucks, 'cause Hazel was pretty cool. They all are, actually."

"We'll see." was all Annabeth said. Luke seemed disappointed by the whole thing, rather than angry or upset. Maybe he was just disappointed that, once again, he had somehow managed to make a situation worse, even if this wasn't really his fault. But trouble did seemed to follow Luke wherever he went. He could never escape it.

Perhaps it was an elaborate plan created by Hera to make Luke even worse feeling than before. She wasn't a huge fan of his 'I'll pick my own family, thank you very much' mentality, but it didn't make sense to catch so many people in the wake. Annabeth doubted Hera would do this. No, this was just a series of mishaps, leading up to the prophecy being short a kid, and everyone losing a friend.

The pressure Annabeth had previously felt from everyone telling her to cure Jason had transformed into guilt. It felt like there was a giant elephant sitting on her chest, preventing her from breathing properly.

After a few minutes of silence, Luke spoke again.

"Wow," he said. "They really think they can just walk all over us, don't they? Like, here! Have a perfected version of one of our favourite little heroes who turned out wrong! Jesus Christ, what the fuck is wrong with them? You get why I want them gone now?"

"I know why you want them gone," Annabeth said. Jason was a _perfected_ version? "I don't like them either. Honestly, if they don't do something about Gaea now, or even try to keep Jason here, I'm done with them. I'm not fighting for them. Complete the prophecy and defeat Gaea, maybe, but I'll be doing that for myself, not for them."

Annabeth could feel the rage building up inside her again. It was the way she had felt when Thalia had been turned into a tree, the you-could-have-stopped-this feeling. It was the feeling and hate that she had felt in the months after Luke had betrayed them.

The gods could have helped, the gods could have paid attention to their kids. But they didn't. They brought the problems on themselves.

"I was done with them a long time ago," Luke said. "We should just move to Spain after this whole thing is done. I don't think I could even go to Paris now."

Thalia finally came out of Jason's room. Annabeth could see the marks on her face that her make up and tears had left, no matter how hard she had tried to wipe them away. She looked at Annabeth and Luke with an expression that she had worn for a couple weeks after she had learned about Luke's attempt to poison her: numbness and pain.

"We should probably tell the others," she said. Her voice didn't even shake. It was too well trained for that.

* * *

_Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. So that's how that went down. Good job anyone who figured it out. In case anyone's wondering, this idea's been floating around in my head since I finished the Mark of Athena. I was telling my friend about how Jason still didn't seem to have a very vivid personality and then I realized all the similarities between him and Luke, and that Luke was mentioned more in MOA, and that Hermes was the only god who could travel between the mortal world and the Underworld, and then I ended up writing this a few months later. I wish I had a more logical story than that, but I don't._


	10. Chapter 10

_And we approach the end. It's getting closer. Shit gets real. Not going to lie, I'm pretty proud of the end of this chapter. And the whole story's going to be out before HOH comes out, which is good, because it would suck to have this going on at the same time as that. Enjoy... if that's the right word._

* * *

Chapter 10

Percy and Hazel were still hanging around the kitchen when Annabeth, Luke, and Thalia returned. With their help, everyone else was rounded up and took their respective spots around the table. Percy even managed to drag the coach away from the game on TV. The eight demigods and one satyr looked expectantly at each other.

Staying quiet was just delaying the inevitable. Might as well get it over with.

"I figured out what's wrong with Jason," Annabeth announced. Everyone but Thalia and Luke seemed to perk up. Piper looked relieved. Annabeth felt sick to her stomach.

"For sure this time?" Percy asked, squeezing her hand.

"Yeah," Annabeth said. "For sure. I'm so sorry guys, but we can't help him."

"Wait, why?" Piper demanded. "What happened? Isn't he going to be okay?"

"No. He's not. It's a long story, and there are still a couple of bits missing, but we'll get to that eventually, okay? Just listen for now.

"Jason has blond hair, and blue eyes right? He's got a scar on the right side of his face, he's about six foot one, and weighs a hundred and eighty pounds. He's got really wide eyes, tans pretty easily in the summer, and when he laughs he kind of sounds like an elephant."

She looked around for confirmation of this. The demigods and satyr all sat there, apparently satisfied with her description.

And so Annabeth explained her conclusion. She told them all the parallels, how Thalia had created Jason and Hera had made him real. She reminded them how Jason only got sick once Thalia realized that Luke was alive. She said she was sorry, but there was nothing to be done.

"That's why he wasn't dead or alive," Nico said in a hollow voice, once Annabeth was done. "He wasn't a real person anymore, he was just half there."

"But I remember him," Hazel said. "He was at Camp Jupiter for years. We're friends. He led the battle against the Titans at Mount Tam. I know he was there."

"You're sure?" Annabeth asked.

"Absolutely." She didn't look it.

"Come on, Hazel, think. Are you completely sure that's what happened? That it was for sure Jason?" Hazel had to be wrong, although Annabeth hoped she wasn't. The whole theory didn't make sense without this vital bit of information. Hera had tampered with everyone's memory. Leo and Piper could still remember their non-existent days with Jason.

"No, it was definitely him," Hazel said. "There must be another explanation."

"I can still remember before Jason appeared on the bus," Leo added. "I mean, it's a bit fuzzy now. If I try really hard I can picture all these situations without him, with just me and Piper, like how it actually was. But I can still remember him being there."

"You sound like you want him gone," Hazel snapped.

"No. I really don't. I just want to know what's going on," Leo said, hurt. Hazel sighed and squeezed her eyes shut tight.

"Oh," she whispered after several seconds of silence. Annabeth was a little surprised to see Hazel's eyes fill with tears as she opened them. "Mike… oh, _Mike_."

"Mike?" Annabeth asked. Hazel nodded. She was shaking.

"How could I forget about Mike?" she sniffled. "He was in our legion, a son of Mercury. One of his brothers got killed by a Cyclopes, and after that he was always so determined to protect Rome. He – he led the army up Mount Tam to Krios. He was the one to destroyed the throne, and he killed Krios… but he blew up the whole place and didn't get out in time. Gods, how could I forget Mikey? He was my best friend there. There was this time when Octavian… well, he was being Octavian, and Mike stood up for me."

"But Aeoles…" Piper said. "He remembered Jason. He said that he recognized him."

"He remembered Mike, I guess," Annabeth explained. "Hera replaced everyone's memories, and Aeoles's mind is chaotic enough that it would be easy to change a few details. Monsters and nymphs wouldn't be hard either. Did Mike look like Jason?"

"Kind of. But he a little was shorter. And ginger. He didn't have a scar."

"So Hera just took a bunch Mike's memories and stuck them in Jason's head," Luke said. He sounded furious. "That's why he couldn't remember anything at first, he wasn't even close to being finished yet. Have I mentioned how much I hate the gods?"

Annabeth looked around the table, judging everyone's expressions. Reactions ranged from disbelief and grief-stricken to horrified. For once Hedge seemed to be at a loss for words. He just shook his head, and placed a hand over his heart.

"Gonna miss that kid," he said. "Poor little bugger."

"But Thalia can keep him here, can't she?" Piper's voice was higher than usual. Her eyes were red rimmed. "Right? You just have to try."

"No, she can't," Annabeth responded.

"Well if you tell her she can't, obviously it's not going to happen," Piper said, more frantic sounding now.

"Jason was fading even before we knew what was going on," Annabeth muttered. "Now that she's aware, the illusion's completely broken. I'm guessing he's got less than a day before he's gone entirely."

"We just have to try harder," Piper insisted. "Come on, Thalia, he's your brother! You can save him. He's real, you just have to make him real."

Thalia looked from Piper to Luke and shook her head.

"I can't," she said. "I wish he was real, but he's not."

"But you have to," Piper cried, reaching across the table and grabbing Thalia's hand. "Come on, please Thalia. I know we don't get along, but please! Just try, okay? I don't want to lose him, not again. You have to do something!"

"I know," Thalia said, pulling her arm out of Piper's grasp. "But I can't."

"He'll be okay."

"No, Piper, he won't," Annabeth said. "But you can say good bye to him."

"Okay, okay. He'll go to Elysium and I'll find him there eventually. We can get him back, like with Luke."

"He won't go to the Underworld," Annabeth said. "He's not real."

She looked at Nico for confirmation. He nodded.

"But we have to do something!"

"Piper." It was Luke who spoke this time. "We can't. I know you don't want to lose him. I know the feeling. And it sucks. But there's nothing we can do."

Piper glared at him before burying her head in her arms and sobbing, her shoulders heaving. Leo looked at her helplessly. He was crying, too. Luke reached out towards Piper hesitantly. His hand hovered above her back for a second, then her gently patted her shoulder.

Nobody moved at the table for a long time. Hazel, Leo, and Piper continued to cry while Hedge looked uncharacteristically solemn. Annabeth couldn't bring herself to look Percy in the eye; she had already seen the tears welling up. Frank looked worried and concerned, chewing on the sleeve of his sweater, and wiping his eyes with it every now and then.

Annabeth was the first to get up. She couldn't stand looking at what her theory had done. No, what Hera had done, and she had explained. The familiar boiling fury began to rise inside her – the one that she felt when the prophecy kids complained about how hard their lives had been, the one that was there when Thalia had been turned into a tree, when Kronos had taken over Luke, and whenever she saw Hermes. Hera didn't run their lives. She had no right to. And Annabeth was going to make sure that she stopped.

The rest of the afternoon was a bit of a blur. Annabeth cried at least once, she was sure of that. In her bedroom, by herself, curled up in her blankets. She didn't like crying around other people. Annabeth was going to miss him. She'd never been super close with Jason, but they'd been friends. They'd worked together. And the place was going to seem a little empty without him.

At some point (Annabeth wasn't sure when it was) Percy came to her room. He sat down on her bed, while she scribbled down possible plans for what Gaea could be up to. She needed at distraction, and this was perfect. The notes she had made about Jason had been torn out of the notebook and crumpled up, so now only the pages on Gaea remained.

"So I'm thinking Gaea's trying to get an army together," Annabeth said as soon as Percy took his seat. "She's probably hunting down laestrygonians, giants, empousi, whatever monsters she can find. Probably organizing them. I doubt she'd get any of the minor gods or any demigods on her side this time, but I'm sure anyone stuck in Tartarus would be glad to get out, so she might get some Titans, too."

She was babbling, she knew. But Gaea was important, and Percy needed to know these things.

"She's probably trying to find the weakest link in Olympus, someone who she might be able to manipulate and use to infiltrate. She might go for Ares, but he's recently been tricked, so he also might be on red alert. Maybe one of the minor gods who didn't fight with the Titans, or one who wasn't satisfied with the deal they got at the end of the war. There's no way she's given up, or just stopped because the gods have disappeared, and I don't think she's going to go for the Doors of Death again. She might, just so that she can get some old demigods and mortals back, but I don't think it's going to happen. She could probably just open up a hole in Tartarus anyway and let them out. I mean, she is the Earth and everything – "

"I'm going to miss him," Percy interrupted. Annabeth gasped for the breath that she hadn't taken for the past couple of minutes.

"Me too," she said, leaning her head on Percy's shoulder as he wrapped his arm around her. She wanted to keep working on her plans about Gaea, but at the same time she wanted to fall asleep and never wake up.

"How did you even come up with that?" Percy asked after a minute of silence. "I never would have guessed that he was a … whatever he is." He shook his head.

"I don't know," Annabeth sighed. She really didn't. The idea had just popped into her head. "It was a lot of things coming together at once. I mean, they look really similar, but there was also the timing, with Thalia attacking Luke. That's when Jason started getting sick. And then they liked all the same things, and I guess they kind of talk the same way. But all that was just a bunch of unrelated information. It didn't click until Leo said that it felt like him and Luke were already really close after knowing each other for just a couple of days."

"I still can't figure out why the fuck Hera would do something like that."  
"Maybe she really is that obsessed with families. And if she wanted to switch two boys, she needed one that the Romans would care about, and the guy who led their army in the war was dead.

"You aren't happy that Luke and Jason are the same person, are you?" Annabeth asked.

"I don't know. I guess not," Percy said. "I mean, Jason always seemed so much more trustworthy than Luke."

"You trusted Luke at first. But just because Jason is Luke, it doesn't mean that they're exactly the same. Their personalities were a bit different."

"Yeah, why is that? Wasn't Thalia trying to recreated Luke or something?"

"Kind of, but it was meant to be a perfected version of him. So anything that got him in trouble – lying, stealing, rebelling – got thrown out and replaced with honesty and obedience, and basically any traits that wouldn't have gotten Luke in so much trouble in the first place. He was supposed to be Luke, but better," Annabeth explained.

"Jason didn't go around hating everything in his line of sight."

"Luke has a special ability to do that."

"How did he take this, anyway?" Percy asked. "I mean, finding out that your best friend's long lost little brother is actually a weird model of you."

"He's really pissed off at the gods, mostly, for actually letting this whole thing happen. You know, the usual. I think he's too weirded out by the whole thing to really react any other way. How's Piper?"

"Awful," Percy responded. "But I guess finding out that your boyfriend is actually a dead guy who you don't even like is a bit of a shock."

He seemed way too calm which Annabeth found strange. Pretending nothing had happened was probably his defense, though. Annabeth had distracted herself. Maybe he was just going with denial.

"You okay?" she said quietly.

"Yeah." Percy looked at her confusedly. "Do I not look okay?"

"No, you look way too calm."

"Oh. I guess. I don't even know what to think. It's just too fucked up." Percy shook his head. "Gods, I'm gonna miss him."

He didn't need to ask how she'd taken the whole thing. It was obvious enough that she wasn't happy. The guilt was all over her face.

"I don't know what to think about anything anymore," Percy continued. "Like, the gods created Jason, and then order us around while they don't even do anything."

"I know. I've honestly given up on them."

"It's like when we were in Rome, and before Bacchus would help us defeat Ephialtes and Otis, we had to prove that we were worthy fighting partners to him. As if I haven't spent the past five years running around doing whatever they wanted, fighting Titans, and never questioning it! I… I guess I kind of understand where Luke was coming from when he said it was time for someone else to take over." Percy looked at her guiltily. "They act like they own the world."

"They kind of do," Annabeth pointed out. "But they let it go to their heads too much. The gods aren't good, but they're the best we've got."

"What?"

"Churchill. You know? 'No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise.' That whole thing."

"Yeah. Pretty much. Life's shitty no matter what," Percy sighed. Normally he wasn't so negative, and neither was Annabeth. Of course, normally they didn't have a dying doppelganger a few doors down. Mix in a depressing prophecy, and it was all just miserable.

The two sat in silence for a while, having nothing else to say. It was a situation so unfathomable, so abrupt and unexpected that no one was quite sure what sort of reaction was appropriate. Annabeth allowed her mind to go blank for a while, until Frank cautiously opened the door a crack and peeked inside.

"Can I come in?" he asked nervously from the other side. He probably didn't want to stumble upon them sleeping together again.

"Yeah." Percy called back. Frank took a step into the room, more serious and sombre than Annabeth had ever seen him look.

"Jason's… not good," Frank said. "He's barely even conscious now. Piper, and Leo, and Hazel were with him, and they're trying to get everyone together. I just saw him and… I – I don't really know how much longer he's going to last. So you should probably come now."

Percy and Annabeth were off the bed before Frank finished talking. They followed him out into the hallway, and down towards Jason's room. Leo, Piper, Luke, Nico, and coach Hedge were already there, crowded around Jason's bed, where he lay, slowly blinking up at the group. Thalia and Hazel arrived soon after Percy and Annabeth.

_Sick _wasn't the right word to describe how Jason looked. Pale didn't work either. He didn't look ill, or dying, just very, very sleepy. His skin seemed almost translucent, and his hair delicate. His features were blurred, out of focus. They seemed to not exactly, _change_, but remain in flux. Undetermined. Unfinished. The once blue eyes seemed to be drained of their colour. Annabeth closed her eyes despite the fact that he might only have had moments left. She needed to preserve the healthy, normal version of Jason in her mind forever. His face, the way he walked, his voice and laugh. She could picture it perfectly inside her head, and she never wanted to forget it. Even if Jason was a recreation of Luke, he was still Jason.

Piper leaned on the bed next to him, stroking his hair. With each brush, she looked hesitant. Her hand would hover over his head for second, scared that she would break him somehow. Leo stood right behind her, wiping his eyes every couple of seconds. Not wanting to miss any of this precious time with his best friend.

Annabeth reached out and touched Jason's hand gently, which was lying on top of the covers. It didn't feel like a hand. It felt like smooth, fine silk, like a thin leaf. Delicate, once again. Jason's head rolled to the side, and he looked directly at Piper. She quickly brought her sleeved arm to her face, soaking up the tears.

"Piper?" he breathed. His voice didn't come from his mouth. It came from everywhere within the room. Annabeth couldn't pinpoint the origin of its location. It existed, but had no specific place.

"I'm here, Jason," Piper said, blinking back tears. She tried to say something else, but choked up. Jason's eyes moved slowly to each face. He looked desperately at Annabeth. She didn't look away. She wanted to, but he deserved this much at least.

"We're all here for you, man," Leo said quietly. Jason's eyes swivelled up to focus on him.

"What… happen…" Jason's voice appeared again in synch with the movement of his lips.

"You're just tired, that's all," Luke said suddenly. "You've just got to relax, okay? Deep breaths, and relax. Don't worry, you'll be fine. Everyone's here, and you just need to rest."

Luke had always been one to speak up when others wouldn't, and even now he was the one talking. Comforting another version of himself into death. Maybe he cared because Jason was him. Maybe it was because people he cared about had known Jason. Maybe it was survivor's guilt, or maybe it was just plain guilt.

"Can't … legs… feel," Jason managed. Luke nodded. He had managed to get to the front of the crowd, and knelt next to Piper.

"Yeah, I know. But don't you feel free at the same time? Free of anything binding you down… Just relax. Drift. Don't try anymore, just sleep, Jason. Relax."

Piper sniffed and wiped more tears from her eyes.

"I love you," she whispered. Jason looked at her blankly, his eyes dull and a little glassy looking. Annabeth wondered if she meant it completely, or if she was saying it because she would never see him again and it would be her last chance. Piper held her breath and choked back a sob.

"You see?" Luke said. "We're all here for you, you're fine. Nothing's going to hurt you, just relax. Let go. You're almost free."

Jason tried to say something, but Annabeth could only hear a whisper, too quiet to decipher. She had no idea what it was saying. She felt the air rush into her ears, the sound bounce, and no words form. Empty.

He didn't try to say anything afterwards. Luke muttered a few more words of encouragement.

"It's time to sleep now. You'll feel better once you let it go. Stop trying, and relax."

Piper kept stroking Jason's hair methodically. His chest wasn't even moving at all anymore, and his eyes wandered, rolling vaguely around the room. He was made of dust and light. Dust floating in the air, arranged in the shape of a sixteen-year-old boy.

Annabeth's eyes roamed hungrily over every feature of his being, memorizing it, determined to keep it alive in her mind. He was made of a trick of a light, a reflection, a misled interpretation of the information received by the retina.

Piper's hand brushed a pillow. Luke whispered words to no one. Leo stared at empty sheets. They stood next to an empty bed that had once held Jason Grace, son of Jupiter.


	11. Chapter 11

_In which we are almost done with this thing I called a story. I'm not entirely sure if I have much to say about this chapter. Uh... Here: listen to the song Au Revoir by the Front Bottoms. It's pretty cool. Enjoy the chapter._

* * *

Chapter 11

Dinnertime came and went. The kitchen remained empty. Instead, the part of the hallway outside of Jason's room was filled. Leo and Piper sat against one wall with the coach. Piper and Hedge were crying, and Leo, as hard as he tried, still shuddered with sobs. Sparks flamed on his hands every few seconds, singing Piper's hair as he leaned against her. Frank, Hazel, and Nico were curled up near the end of the hallway. Nico and Hazel exchanged whispered words, sounding hopeless rather than worried, for there was nothing left to worry about. Luke and Thalia were together, obviously, sitting with their backs against the wall, heads down. Luke had his arm around Thalia's shoulder, but there was nothing romantic about it. Best-friend style.

Annabeth and Percy leaned on each other, dependent, as usual, on the fact that the other wouldn't fall. Percy had his arm around Annabeth, and, like Luke's gesture, it was there for comfort and support, not for flirting. Annabeth almost felt like she'd rather be with Luke and Thalia at the moment; it seemed more like family time rather than boyfriend time. But there would be time later. Tomorrow, or, if possible, tonight. And it wasn't as if she couldn't depend on Percy.

It was late when the crowd dispersed, well passed midnight. Not even bothering to change into pyjamas, Annabeth flopped onto her bed and prayed that for one night she could just have peace. Let her brain shut off, not thinking of plans, people, or the pits of Tartarus. Maybe the gods were responding to her, or maybe she was just so exhausted and emotionally spent that her body and mind gave up on trying to remain conscious. Either way, she slept without dreaming.

Upon awaking, Annabeth did not feel rested. The digital clock next to her bed told her that it was nearly two in the afternoon. She had slept for eleven hours. Then again, she probably could have slept for another two days and still feel tired. She knew this kind of exhaustion. It had nothing to do with sleep, and everything to do with loss.

Frank, Hazel, Luke, and Percy were in the kitchen when Annabeth finally decided to give in to the ache in her stomach and go on an expedition for food. None of them were eating, and they all looked sloppy, like half-assembled people quickly thrown together. The coach arrived shortly after Annabeth, as she tried to swallow a piece of toast. Even he didn't have any sort of comment for the situation. This time there was no one to beat the shit out of, unless you counted the gods. And there was no way a satyr could get away with that.

Thalia didn't come out of her room until the next day, and Nico spent a good eightteen hours sleeping. Piper and Leo were inseparable, and seemed to be as emotionally fragile and delicate as Jason had been physically in his final day. Piper didn't talk much. Leo didn't talk at all.

Days passed. Annabeth constantly expected to see Jason coming around the corner, the way she had expected Luke to come running up Half-Blood Hill after he'd left, or Percy to be at sword fighting lessons in past few months, and for Thalia to be there when she woke up in a strange, unfamiliar camp every day. Needless to say, he didn't. The ship was eerily quiet. Leo spent every second of his time making sure it was functioning properly, while Piper hung around watching him. Food went bad in the fridge. No one had much of an appetite. Nico looked even skinnier and unhealthier than usual.

The amount of sleep Annabeth was getting had taken a sharp incline downwards since her eleven hour slumber. The nightmares of Tartarus had returned, now combined with flashes of Jason. She woke several times a night, tears streaming down her face and throat soar as the dreams slipped away.

Nobody really got better, even after a week. The initial shock was beginning to wear off, and the space previously void of emotion on the ship was being filled. Not with acceptance, or sadness, but with anger. Just little bits of it at first. Percy would put the peanut butter back in the fridge with a little too much force, cracking the jar. Hazel would tap her knife on the table (a formerly harmless habit) hard enough to leave deep gouges. Electricity would crackle on the metal appliances near Thalia, and a familiar glint would appear in Luke's eyes every now and then. Soon, it was there all the time, as was Percy's new sour expression, and a constant look of frustration on Frank's face.

Annabeth could feel the anger building inside her, too. It felt all too familiar. It often appeared, setting its sights formerly on Percy (if he was being particularly stupid), or Clarisse, or that know-it-all in her chemistry class, Terry. Now it was largely directed at its primary, constant target: the gods.

They had no right to do any of this, she decided. Who put them in charge? They had made an oath, broken it, and then, rather than punishing the offender, they had hunted down the innocent child. They had abandoned Luke, herself, and all other demigods. They weren't fixing the economy, or making people's lives better. They expected everything to be done for them whenever they wanted.

She wanted them gone.

Not replaced with the Titans – that was just stupid – but for the first time, she was a hundred percent sure that she wanted the gods out for good. She didn't need them. They had constructed a fake person, born to die, and thrown him into their lives, replacing a hero for the Romans, and causing mayhem among the Greeks. It wasn't just Hera Annabeth was mad at. The bystanders are as guilty as the perpetrators, right? Which made her pretty guilty (she had kept quiet for so long), and the gods even guiltier.

A plan began to form. Luke's idea. Usually his plans were experimental, dangerous, and impractical, but this one wasn't. This one didn't involve destroying the gods, simply calling them out on their bullshit.

"I know where they are," Luke said suddenly. It had been nine days since Jason had faded, and the ship was as void of human voices as ever. The entire group was sitting around the dinner table, all poking their spaghetti idly with their forks when Luke made his announcement.

"Olympus, duh," Percy replied. "Hiding."

"No," Luke said. "Olympus is abandoned, so they're hiding somewhere else. They have other locations to have their meetings. And I can guarantee they'll all be together two days."

There was no need to even ask if everyone wanted to find the gods. They had a bone to pick with those ancient toddlers.

"Great. But how would we find them? And why would they want to all get together now? The solstice was over a month ago," Nico said.

"I told you, I know where they are." Luke leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. "London. England. Europe. Convenient, eh?"

"Why?" Thalia asked.

"The Summer Olympics," Annabeth realized. Luke nodded, snapping his fingers and pointing at her.

"They wouldn't miss it for the world," he explained. "If there's any chance we're going to get them all together, it's going to be at the Olympics."

"And they have a back up Olympus in London?" Percy asked. "How do you even know that?"

"You learn a thing or two, hanging around with immortals. They know tons about each other, and they love telling stories about how the others have messed up. The gods like to keep a backup Olympus. Not in Greece – that's the last resort, the most vulnerable spot – they like to keep an extra meeting room in the last place they were based in. And before they were in America, they were in Britain. Specifically London." Luke grinned at everyone, but he didn't look happy. Bitter and satisfied, yes, but not happy. The angry glint was still in his eyes.

"So we go to London," Thalia declared. There was a murmur of agreement from around the table.

"Seriously? What are you going to do, whisper at them?" Luke yelled. "We're going to London to face the gods! Are you guys going to act like that around them?"

A much more powerful cry erupted from around the table. Only Leo didn't join in. Annabeth shivered. She remembered where she had seen another person whip a group into a battle frenzy: Camp Jupiter, when Octavian had accused Leo of trying to destroy New Rome. She caught Percy's eye and knew that he had also seen the similarity.

_Except Luke isn't Octavian_, she reminded herself. Luke didn't just jump into situations and try to destroy people. He made his own decisions, and didn't let anyone else alter them. That, Annabeth realized, was the difference between the two boys. Octavian used his charisma to conquer and gain, while Luke used his to evoke change.

She still didn't like the connection, though.

Leo looked more alive than Annabeth had seen in days. He seemed to move less mechanically, a look of grim determination set on his face. He still hadn't spoken a single word yet, but Annabeth could see him returning to his normal self. Leo was back, and Leo was angry. Annabeth wasn't sure if this was a good thing. After all, Leo _never_ got angry.

It occurred to Annabeth that perhaps she was being slightly unreasonable. Maybe everyone was being a little extreme. The thought worried her, and she wondered if they should have taken more time to consider if Jason's presence had done more good than harm. But after looking around at the misery on the ship, the uncertainty disappeared.

The Argo II hadn't moved since Annabeth had first woken up after coming back from Tartarus. This meant that it was still in the Swiss mountains, and London was a little over a day's journey away. A hard, grief-driven determination had seemed to settle over the crew of the ship. Everyone was working, either helping Leo run the engine (it had been stagnant for two weeks now and was a little creaky), or planning out their talk with the gods. Even the coach was working on the plan. He was aggressive, if nothing else, but Annabeth wasn't sure if this would help them or not. Either way, he was going to be on their side.

Sometimes Leo turned on a radio, which Annabeth hoped was a sign that he was feeling a bit better. He managed to find an English station that played some kind of electronic pop. In the news reports the main topic seemed to be earthquakes. It seemed as though a series of violent tremors had been happening during the past few days all over North America. They were in strange places, too, not just on fault lines.

"I guess that would be Gaea," Annabeth said. Leo didn't say anything, and again she found herself questioning whether fighting with the gods now was really a good idea.

Annabeth watched the channel pass beneath the Argo II, her stomach twisting. They were getting closer to London, closer to the end of the line. It wasn't their confrontation that worried Annabeth, it was the aftermath. This was a group of nine angry demigods and a very aggressive satyr coming to call the gods out on… well, a lot of things from the looks of it. The gods didn't like it when people pointed out their flaws.

As they approached the outskirts of London, Luke took over steering. He guided the Argo II towards Buckingham Palace. Annabeth was briefly reminded of an episode of Doctor Who in which a flying replica of the Titanic almost crashed into the palace. She felt a sudden rush of gratitude for the mist. Leo landed the ship in the enormous field just behind the palace.

"How do we get to Olympus?" Percy muttered into her ear. Annabeth shrugged.

"No idea," she said. "There's definitely no six hundredth floor here."

None of the mortals seemed to notice the enormous battle ship that had landed behind Buckingham Palace. In fact, landing a flying boat next to a major London landmark seemed to be the easy part. Finding Olympus was much harder.

After twenty minutes of searching wildly, (and Percy panicking about being mistaken for terrorists) Annabeth managed to slide in with a tour group. She motioned for the others to join her. No one took notice of the ten new additions.

Once inside the palace, the demigods broke off from their tour group. Annabeth was a little reluctant, but she was eventually dragged away.

"But they're explaining Elizabeth the first!" she protested as Percy steered her down a flight of stairs. "They were going to talk about the construction of the Globe Theatre next!"

"Why do they even need a theatre for a globe?" Percy said. "You have one on your desk."

"No, the Globe _Theatre!_ You know, where Shakespeare's plays were performed."

"Oh. Like Romeo and Juliet. Hamlet. Starry Night."

"I'm pretty sure that last one's Van Gogh." Percy waved his hand passively.

"Same thing. Don't tell Rachel I said that. Hey!" He called over to Luke, who was leading their pack through the corridors. "Where are we going exactly?"

"We're trying to find someone who can help us," Luke said. He rounded a corner, then backed up. An old man in a tuxedo followed him.

"Excuse me," the man said, looking down at them with such contempt that Annabeth could practically feel waves of judgment coming off of him. "But may I help you?"

Annabeth was tempted to ask if it was mandatory to have such a British accent to work at Buckingham Palace, but Luke cleared his throat and spoke up as the other demigods and the coach squeezed closer together, ready for a fight.

"We're looking for some friends," Luke said. "Some _old_ friends._ Very _old friends."

The man raised his grey eyebrows. Luke continued.

"Like, as old as Athens," he said. "Relatives of ours. Powerful relatives."

"Ah. Yes. Well I'll get you back to your tour group, and I'm sure your relatives will be grateful to have you again," the man said.

_Yes,_ Annabeth thought, _because we all look so very related_. Still, there was a chance. The man who worked at the bottom of the Empire State Building always denied entry to Olympus at first. Luke certainly hadn't given up.

"Oh, they're not with a tour group," he explained. "They're too important to go on tours. Awfully fond of their power, they are. They like to meddle with marriages, music, wars… the ocean. Dead people. You know, the works."

The man nodded curtly.

"I take it not many others have a scar like that," he said. "So I'll assume you lot are who I think you are. And why do you seek their presence?"

"We have information on Gaea," Luke lied smoothly. The man seemed to believe him.

"This way," he said, turning quickly, and leading them down a hall to the left. Luke gave everyone a quick, _aren't-I-amazing, you-should-all-be-impressed_ look before running after the man. He led them through extravagantly decorated hallways and up sprawling staircases. Annabeth was sure she saw Kate Middleton watching TV in a room with the door slightly open. While passing a window she spotted a hellhound bounding across the field behind the palace. It seemed like a strange mix.

Their guide halted suddenly in front of an unassuming light wood door near the end of a narrow hallway. He removed a big brass key from his pocket, jiggled it in the lock for a couple of seconds, and then opened the creaking door, holding an arm out to usher them through. On the other side of the door there was a winding wooden staircase, narrow enough to fit only one person at a time. It was covered in a gaudy purple and red carpet. Cobwebs hung from the banisters. Annabeth shivered and hoped there weren't spiders in there. The stairwell wasn't exactly what one would expect to find as the doors to Olympus.

"Terribly sorry for the state of it, but I'm afraid no one's used this entrance in such a long time. Must have been five years ago, last time," the man said apologetically.

"Don't worry about it," Luke muttered, stepping cautiously through the door. A cloud of dust rose from the carpet where his shoe had landed. He reached for the banister and turned, waiting for the others to follow him.

"Thanks man," Percy said, reaching to give the old man a high five. The man looked a little miffed, then delicately extended his hand, and carefully shook Percy's. Everyone else murmured their thanks to the man as they started to climb the stairs in a single file line. The stairway smelled musty, dusty, and very, very old. Frank sneezed as dust flew out of the carpet from the impact of Hazel's foot ahead of him.

The narrow tower that housed the staircase was lit with chandeliers hanging from the stairs above. As she passed one, Annabeth took a closer look. The candles were actually lit with fire, rather than electricity. As Thalia, bringing up the rear, passed each chandelier, the flames went out, while they lit themselves just ahead of Luke. The result made it impossible to judge how long they'd been climbing the steep stairs for, and exactly how high up Olympus was from the palace.

Annabeth had long since given up on counting the stairs when they finally reached the top of the stairs. Every muscle in her legs ached. Another nondescript door stood on the landing, faded and discoloured with time. The door swung open easily when Luke pushed it, even though the hinges were rusted. Light shone through, blinding Annabeth. She clambered up the last of the stairs, trying without success to shield her eyes as she stepped into Olympus.


	12. Chapter 12

_Welllll this is it. The end of the line. The last chapter. I've had way too much fun writing this story and indulging my own weird ideas, and luckily I've managed to get it out there before HOH is an actual thing. After thinking and writing and editing for nearly a year, I'd say I've done alright. Thanks to everyone who reviewed. This may or may not be the last of me you see on . Of course, I always seem to say that at the end of my stories, but whatever. It's possible this is my last story. Unless I decide to post a series of twenty one-shots or something._

_Anyway, thanks for making it this far into my bizarre ideas. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did._

* * *

Chapter 12

The British Olympus was different from the American one. While the mountain on top of the Empire State Building held ancient Greek buildings and a few modern American ones hidden behind large temples, the British home of the gods held yes, ancient Greek temples, but rather than new, sleek buildings, the area was filled with Victorian and early twentieth century architecture. In the distance Annabeth could see parks and fountains, but more immediately in front of her the cobblestone road was lined with old town houses. Eighteen thirties, Annabeth guessed. As they made their way into the not-so-eternal city, Annabeth caught glimpses of medieval buildings down the streets.

Their destination was obvious. A temple much like the one in New York stood on top of a hill, looming over the city beneath it. Unlike the new, shiny, white temple she was used to, this one was grey and weathered looking. It had cracks in the walls and in the columns, and seemed much gloomier.

The whole city seemed less lively than what Annabeth was used to. Every now and then a minor god or goddess would stroll down the street, but they were huddled and hurried, and looked distinctly poorer than in America. Annabeth supposed that the gods weren't nearly as powerful here as in the US. Being so far from their source of power had to have an effect on their abilities.

The throne room, like the rest of the Greek buildings in the city, was much like its American twin, only dirtier. Cobwebs hung in the corners, and the walls were grimy and filthy with coal dust. There were twelve large white patches on the marble ground, untouched by the dust, and presumably where the thrones would have been, seeing as they were to only things missing. As the nine demigods and satyr entered the room, the loud chatter that had been present fell silent. The gods (about twenty of them) looked more or less like they always did, but more casual. They stood in small groups in their human-sized forms, looking up in shock from their conversations at the interruption.

It was a heavy silence, pressing down on Annabeth as she, like everyone else, waited for someone to do something. She remembered the plan of what they would say to the gods, but it didn't seem like anyone else did. Thalia was supposed to start talking any time now, explaining how pissed off they were. Instead, she stood next to Annabeth, glaring with utter hatred at the friendly little gathering of all-powerful beings.

Hermes was the first one to crack.

"Luke," he gasped. "You're alive?"

Luke didn't even look at his father. His eyes, alive with flames, were set on Hera. She looked down haughtily at him from the raised platform the gods stood on, 3 feet up, and Annabeth felt her hatred for the goddess bubble up again.

"We've got a bone to pick with you guys," he said loudly. "Specifically you." Luke pointed at Hera. Her chin rose slightly and the pride stayed in her expression. "Several bones, actually," Luke continued. "First of all, what the fuck is up with Jason Grace?"

The gods, to say the least, did not look pleased. Suggestions were tolerated. Criticism was punishable. And insulting the gods was just plain stupid.

"Jason united your camps," Hera snapped. "It's a shame you couldn't just let him be. And what are you even doing out of the Underworld?"

"Doors of Death," Luke said. "So, you created a whole person just to introduce the camps? All of you agreed on this?"

Apollo, Hephaestus, and Poseidon looked away, guilt mingling with their surprise. Artemis held her gaze, but she looked more than a little uncomfortable.

"Their hero was dead. We needed someone they would care about, someone they would go after… and here was a hero, ready made. We just needed to give him a physical form," Athena explained. The way she said it sounded so rational, so reasonable and intelligent. Annabeth could see the logic in the idea. It made sense. Theoretical sense, anyway.

Luke did not think this sounded logical at all. His fists were clenched, and Annabeth could see the veins in his forearms stand out against his skin.

"You wanted a _hero_," he said through his teeth. "You wanted a _hero,_ so you took a character from the mind of a miserable teenage girl, based on a guy you actively hate."

Athena shook her head.

"You possess a fair number of useful qualities, they just needed tweaking. Add a little obedience, and Jason was perfectly fine," she said.

"_Obedience?_ You can't just take my – "

"But what about Mike?" Hazel cried, interrupting Luke. "Mike saved us, he was a hero! And you erased him like he never existed."

"Sacrifices were necessary, child," Zeus said. "You think we do not know how to carry out a plan to unite two nations? Greece was merely a collection of villages and towns before we brought it together."

"In times of war, extreme measures must be taken. What, child, would have been _your_ solution?" Athena questioned Hazel, glaring down at her. Hazel was livid, her jaw clenched, but her mouth stayed shut.

"Oh, I don't know, maybe try to introduce the Greeks and Romans instead of hiding up in Olympus?" Luke said loudly. Zeus glowered at him.

"We are not hiding, boy – "

"Funny, because that's exactly what it looks like."

"We are establishing our position," the god finished.

"Haven't you already done that by defeating the Titans again?" Thalia said. Her feet were planted shoulder-width apart, arms crossed. She glared up at the gods. "You know, the ones that you wouldn't even accept were coming back for like, two years? And now with Gaea? And the prophecy, where the three of you claimed to have no demigod children, but the cabins are starting to fill up anyway? Haven't you proven that you're above any laws you make?"

"We are not above the law, child, but a constant reminder if our leadership is needed," Zeus replied. "Now that some are thinking of a mortal life as better than immortal."

Percy held up his hands in defense.

"Hey, it was a personal choice. You can't – "

"And others," Zeus continued loudly, as if Percy had not spoken. "are thinking themselves high enough to meddle with death and waltz right out of the Underworld."

All eyes turned to Luke. He shrugged.

"Can you blame him?" Annabeth said, jumping to Luke's defense. Percy was shaking his head next to her. "His life did get pretty messed up, and it wasn't his fault. Of course he'd want to live again."

"Plus, Elysium is apparently really boring," Leo threw in, having heard Luke's Tales from the Underworld. Luke cringed as he said the words.

"Oh?" Hades raised his eyebrows. Annabeth hadn't even noticed him until then, standing at the back of the crowd. But now he was making his way through the other gods to the front. "You were in Elysium, were you? You didn't tell them?"

"Tell us what?" Annabeth asked, glancing at Luke uncertainly. He stared at the ground.

"Well, our dear friend Luke –" Hades spat his name " – wasn't exactly in Elysium. Where would you say you were, hm?"

"Asphodel," Luke admitted, still looking down.

"But he saved Olympus," Annabeth protested. Leo nodded next to her, and Thalia muttered her agreement.

"True, but all actions are taken into account. And his record before his sacrifice wasn't what I would call spotless. Treason, murder, arson, theft, betrayal, you name it." Hades narrowed his eyes. "Quite rude, too."

"Which is a stupid reason to take away someone's chance at Elysium, don't you think?" Luke said, regaining some of his confidence.

"That wasn't the only factor."

"Yeah, right. You were actually going to let me go until I wouldn't look at you."

"I attended you trial, boy; you should have seen it as an honour. And instead, you insulted me by not looking up when I asked. You were walking on eggshells already. It was foolish to push your luck."

"But I thought you were supposed to judge me based on what I did in my life," Luke said. "Not my death."

"You wouldn't let him into Elysium because he refused to look at you during his trial?" Thalia said in disbelief.

"Among other things. He was very disrespectful in general." The gods nodded, a murmur of approval ascending. Some of them even smiled a bit, as if feeling a victory coming on, and reassured that their actions made sense.

"Why would I respect any of you, anyway?" The tendons in Luke's bare arms became more prominent as he tensed. "You sit around, commanding everyone to do your shit for you, and you won't even accept it if you've done something wrong! Finally, someone showed you how fucking awful you all are to your kids and just about everyone else. Your economy is a mess, you're pulling out of wars that you were so sure you were going to win, and the population of your country is so divided that it can't even decide a simple rule about gays in the army! And that's just what you've done to people in general. Don't even get me started on what you've done specifically to me."

The room was silent. Zeus looked furious, but Luke continued to shout before the god could interrupt.

"Do you have any idea what it's like?" Luke yelled. He was visibly shaking with fury now. "Everywhere I went, all anybody told me was that my life was going to suck! As if it didn't already. Do you know what that's like?"

None of the gods were smiling now.

"You always say that a person should never know their future, and then you go and ignore your own rules! 'Cause when we know what's going to happen, the more we try to stop it. And the more we try to stop it, the more it happens! You don't care! You _like_ it. You're sick, all of you. You're all sick."

He took a deep, shaky breath. For a few seconds, the only noise in the room was Luke's heavy breathing. Had he actually made an impression on them? After so long, and so many battles, he had finally convinced them of something? It certainly looked like that.

"_We're_ sick?" Zeus said. "Are you forgetting, boy, that you attempted to resurrect the Titans?"

Or maybe not.

"Did you not want war and destruction? The end of the Western world?" Zeus continued.

"I wanted a new world." Luke glared up at them. "One where innocent people don't get punished because of a pointless curse and the fear of a prophecy. You've been around for a long time. The world needed change. It still does, but you won't let it happen. You're the problem."

The room was tense, and Annabeth could see rage flashing in Zeus's eyes. He spoke sharply and with a dangerous amount of control.

"I think," Zeus said. "After running the world for so long we'd have gotten the hang of it. We know what – "

"Oh, yeah right. Fuck you." Luke rolled his eyes. This, apparently, was just about as much as Zeus was going to take.

"OUT!" he bellowed, flicking his hand. Luke skidded backwards and slammed into the wall next to the door. He stayed on his feet, but gripped the wall for support.

"I will not tolerate this kind of behavior! Do not forget your place, demigod," Zeus roared. Hermes looked like he wanted to say something, but whatever it was, he held it back. Luke glanced briefly at his father before looking back down, trying to regain his breath. Annabeth didn't miss the disappointment on his face.

Zeus turned back towards the group of demigods he had not thrown against a wall, and the coach. Annabeth gripped her knife. She remembered how it had been Luke who had returned it to her in Tartarus, along with her laptop, but she restrained herself from looking back at him.

"Now, if you could all leave, we could get on with our business," he said, his voice returning its previous attempted composure. "Circumstances are not, ah, ideal, but we must cope with them. Thalia, I expect you will be returning to the hunters. Di Angelo, we can… well, we can send you back to Camp Half-Blood. Maybe it's best that the others go with you for now." He was talking very swiftly, not giving anyone an opportunity to interrupt him again. "Perseus Jackson, you do seem to have a certain talent for leading allies into battle, so I suppose, grudgingly, for this has not changed what I think of you, that perhaps you should keep a watchful eye for a seventh demigod to bring on your quest. We will be with you shortly to put these plans into action, but for now you are all dismissed."

Zeus snapped his fingers and the doors of the temple flew open, nearly crushing Luke. He'd just managed to stumble out of the way.

Slowly, the small, dejected crowd began to shuffle towards the door. Annabeth didn't want to leave. This wasn't over and it wasn't fair. But she knew a defeat when she saw one, and there was no way that the gods were going to listen to them now. Luke had made sure of that. She couldn't help but feel annoyed at him for not keeping his mouth shut. It was like this that he always managed to mess up plans.

As Annabeth and the others turned to head for the door, disappointed and frustrated, she noticed that three figures had not moved at all. Luke was still leaning against the wall on one arm, rubbing his back with the other. Thalia and Percy were standing in front of the gods, rooted to the ground, their backs to Annabeth. A little bit of lightning crackled around Thalia. Annabeth was sure she was going to start yelling at the gods any second. Instead, however, it was Percy who started talking.

"Are you serious," he said. His whole body was tensed, ready for a fight. "You play games with my life, call me a hero, tell me I'm worthless, use me for entertainment, invent a Roman soldier to switch me with for a few months, and now you think I'm just going to do exactly what you say?"

Percy's voice sounded oddly calm. Annabeth couldn't see his face, but she didn't need to. There were very few situations in which Percy reached this level of intensity.

"I fought a war for you," Percy continued. "I've been fighting a second war for you. I've been blamed for crimes that I had nothing to do with. I've been told I was a mistake. I put up with all of that."

He laughed, short and humourless. The group had stopped at the door and turned to watch Percy. Piper's expression was somewhere between admiration and pity.

"I always thought Luke was wrong about you." He gestured to the gods. "But this is how you treat the people you have direct contact with. And you know what? After everything you've put me through, I'm starting to see why someone would bring back the Titans if it would mean your end."

Bad move, Percy. Very bad move. Not something you want to say right to the gods.

"You need us to keep yourselves alive, but we don't need you. I'm not twelve anymore, I can see how you run things! And I'm not going to be part of your games anymore. 'Cause that's what we are to you. Entertainment value. But I'm done. Go find yourselves another fucking hero."

He turned quickly, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then walked towards the doors. Not looking back. Thalia looked between Percy, Luke, and Zeus a few of times, then turned on her heels and followed Percy out. Luke stumbled after her. The throne room was eerily quiet behind them.

As he strode past Annabeth, she followed, keeping pace with him. She linked her arm in his.

"I don't even care anymore," Percy muttered under his breath. "No wonder none of the heroes had happy endings."

Annabeth remembered how the gods had liked Luke so much, right up until his quest when he was seventeen.

"They like you until you mess up," she said quietly. "And then they get rid of you as soon as possible. That was really stupid, what you did back there. You should have left it."

"Perseus," Zeus called. Percy didn't turn, and Annabeth was glad. She wasn't going to stop walking even if he did. She was just as sick of the gods as he was. Ten years of them was enough to drive anyone crazy.

"Perseus… son." It was Poseidon this time, much softer than Zeus's command. "Just listen."

Percy hesitated. Annabeth shook her head, but Percy turned anyway. She couldn't bear to see his vain hope that maybe they did care after all

"Don't do this," Poseidon pleaded. "You are one of our greatest heroes in a long, long time. My son. I'm so proud of you. Don't turn your back on us."

Out of the corner of her eye Annabeth could see Thalia and Luke whispering to each other, no doubt about the "greatest hero" bit.

"I – " Percy's voice cracked. He cleared his throat and tried again. "No. I told you. I'm done with this."

"You do realize what that means, don't you?" Zeus had a curious expression on his face. Definitely somewhat mocking, but Annabeth couldn't quite pinpoint what else.

"Despite your reluctance to become a god, we have watched you, you know. We look out for you. A powerful demigod like yourself, the monsters should be flocking. We keep them at bay. Call it a gift to a hero. But if you leave… well, that funding might be cut. Respect will be lost, and privileges will be removed," Zeus explained.

"I don't want your funding," Percy said, shaking his head. Luke was now glaring at Zeus, either in defense of Percy (which would have been a miracle, but who knew at this point?), or because he was remembering how he had lost his entertainment value. His funding had been cut, too.

"Very well. But let it be known that you have made a huge mistake today," Zeus said. "We'll be watching you, Perseus Jackson. Now leave."

Percy turned slowly, eying the gods suspiciously. Some looked relieved. Some looked annoyed. Some looked disappointed. Zeus continued to stare at Percy, that odd expression still on his face. Annabeth didn't like it, and she was sure Percy didn't either.

The grimy, coal-streaked building that greeted them outside seemed surreal. Every colour seemed a bit too bright, every sound strangely muted. She followed along, not entirely sure where she was heading, but trusting that whoever was leading knew the way out.

Annabeth left the old, abandoned Olympus in a daze. She didn't feel bad. She didn't feel good. The gods needed to be taught a lesson. It wasn't fair for them to try to bury their pasts and then leave it for the heroes to deal with when it clawed its way out of the ground.

The team of heroes had made the ultimate mistake, but whether Annabeth regretted it or not, she hadn't decided. It wasn't until they reached the stairs that she heard a roar of panic, confusion, and anger arise from the throne room. She shivered. The gods were angry. They wouldn't forget this. And with Gaea still out there…

Luke looked more triumphant than Annabeth had seen him in years, and Percy more unhinged than even during their time in Tartarus. And Annabeth wondered, as she had during the Titan war, when Hera had been kidnapped, and the day when she had decided to trust Thalia and Luke in the alley, if she was truly heading in the right direction.

_End_


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